Bodrum Symposium on Turks and Armenians in History and the Facts (3-4 December 2005, Bodrum) Bodrum, 4.12.05
Compiled by: Sükrü Server Aya
(B)The End of the Ottoman Empire 1908-1923 A.L. Macfie, Longman Ltd. ISBN 0-582-28763-4 PPR
P.24: Normally 3 years followed by 6 years in the active army reserve and 9 years in the reserve. Some 25 years>
P.132:At the same time Armenians living in Zeytun, a town in southeastern Anatolia, who had refusedto be conscripted into the Ottoman army, organized corps of volunteers designed to disrupt Ottoman lines of communication, while Armenians living abroad approached the Entente Powers, with offers to raise a force of some 20 000 men, capable, if properly armed and equipped by the Entente Powers, of instigating an insurrection in Cilicia and securing control of Iskenderun, a strategic port on the the Syrian coast. Then in April 1915 the Armenian inhabitants of Van rose in revolt,
. As for the unfortunate consequence of the policy of deportation, entirely unplanned and unintended, those were merely the outcome of the sickness and exhaustion suffered by the deportees on their long marches, of the attacks launched by marauding gangs of Kurds and other irresponsible elements, beyond government control, and the poverty and deprivation suffered by all inhabitants of the area, Turk as well as Armenian, in that period. Documentary evidence would appear to support the Turkish view.
(C) Lords of the Horizons Jason Goodwin, Henry Holt Co, NY, ISBN 0-8050-4081-1
P.315: Excesses were committed by all sides; the arrival of Protestant missionaries, singing Onward Christian Soldiers among the once quiet Armenians alarmed the Ottomans into thinkingthat the process which had turned their Bulgarian, Greek or Serbian rely against them was about to be repeated.
(D) TURKEY a modern history Erik J. Zurcher- I.B. Tauris Publishers, London- ISBN 1 86064 222 5
P.119-120-121: The Armenian side has tried to demonstrate this involvement but some of the documents it has produced (the so-called Andonian papers) have been shown to be forgeries. Many of the British and American publications on this issue from the time of the First World War which purport to prove government involvement also bear a heavy stamp of wartime propaganda.
(E)The Slaughterhouse Province An American Diplomats Report on the Armenian Genocide,1915-1917
Leslie E. Davis, edited by Susan K. Blair Aristide D. Caratzas, New York - ISBN-0-89241-458-8
P.16: American missionaries rapidly outnumbered merchants in the Ottoman Empire.
When they learned that conversion from Islam to another religion was a crime punishable by death in a country in which the head ofthe state was also the Moslem spiritual leader, they focused their efforts on the Greek, Armenian and other Christian minorities. Idealistic Americans invested $ 40 million (in 1915 dollars) in schools, hospitals, and churches by the outbreak of World War I. Operating with charters from the Ottoman government, these institutions by 1914 employed more than 450 Americans and 4500 Ottoman nationals of various ethnic origins.
P.37:There was never any commercial work of importance in this consular district even in normal times...
P.38: Since the beginning of the war even bread is almost unobtainable...
P.39: Since 1876 the American Board has maintained a college there, which was at first called Armenia College, but the name of which was afterwards changed to Euphrates College where most of the teachers and students were Armenians...
P.46: Typhus was very bad that winter, especially among the soldiers. As many as 75-80 of them died on same days.
P.59: Most of the business of the region was in their hands. 95% of the deposits in the banks belonged to them
P.96: All the business of that region had been carried on by Armenians; all the work of missionaries had been among Armenians.... Many had been kept by friendly Turks in their houses; some had been deported and had returned.
P.168: I certainly have no desire to pose as a champion of the Armenian race or to defend any Armenian revolutionists. After the expulsion of the greater part of the Armenian population duringthe first two or three weeks of July, subsequent deportations have naturally been on a smaller scale and have occurred at longer intervals.
P.177: Word has recently been received from a few individuals who have reached Aleppo. It is noted that they are all women. Apparently no man arrived there.
P.181: During the last two months quite a number of Armenian soldiers have been brought back in groups of two or three hundred from Erzurum. They have arrived in a most pitiable state due to their exposure on the way at this season of the year and in the privations they had suffered.
P.195: (from Turkish proclamation...)
At Harput, despite the repeated affirmations of the Armenians and of their bishop who protested loyalty to the Government, and declared that they did not stockpile any arms, more than 5.000 rifles and revolvers and as many muskets, close to three hundred bombs, forty kilos of fuses for bombs and two hundred packages of dynamite were found, more than it would take to blow up the entire province.
(F)From Swedish paper Nya Daglight Allehanda 23.April 1917, by H.J. Pravitz
And although my long service in the Orient has not convinced me that the Armenians, despite their Christianity, are any of Gods best children, I decided to keep my eyesopen to see for myself to which extent the rumors about Turkish assaults are true and the nameless victims were telling the truth. I sure got to view misery, but planned cruelties? Absolutely nothing.
But I had travel companion of mine, Dr. Schacht, was also traveling along the river. He also had nothing to tell.
In summary, I think that Mrs. Stjernstedt, somewhat uncritically has accepted the hair-raising stories from more or less
biased sources, which formed the basis for her lecture...
G)From New York Times Current History Feb. 1923 ANGORA AND THE TURKS by Arthur T. Chester,
representative of U.S. Shipping Board in Istanbul, son of Rear Admiral Colby M. Chester
As a matter of cold, indisputable fact there is more religious freedom in Turkey than in any other country of the world, more than has ever been recorded in history.
(H)Excerpts from letter of Marc L. Bristol, U.S. High Commissioner, dt. March 28.1921 to D.D.Barton
Secretary of the Foreign Dept. of the Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions:
... As I have stated to Dr. Peet and many others, I believe that so long as we dont refute these false reports made by the Armenians, or dont come out and state the true facts in regard to the Armenian question, we run the risk of being accused of being party to this information.... I certainly was surprised to hear from your letter, that there was a movement on foot to loan money to Armenia.... We have already loaned Armenia over 50 million and that money is lost. I recommended against this loan at the time. Another loan would be simply putting good money after bad...Then finally Armenia turned Bolshevik and repudiated all her debts; and one of these debts was for the flour we had furnished on their word of honor to repay, because they certainly had no security to offer...
... I cannot imagine the United States ever consenting doing this...Another example of this withdrawal of French troops from Cilicia. You see that in the end European Powers are going to do little or nothing for the Armenians...I believe in starting a campaign and placing the Armenian and Greek situation before our people in the United States squarely and fairly, telling both sides of the story. The Greek propaganda in the United States has given our people a wrong idea entirely in regard to the Greek question. The European countries lend themselves to this misleading propaganda. The difficult situation that the European Powers have got into in the Near East is due in my opinion to basing their action upon wrong-doing.
There was no justification for putting the Greeks in Smyrna and this was borne out by a report of investigation which was as fair and square in investigation as was ever made. This report is in the State Department. The Greeks keep ...
... I am absolutely certain that any assumption of responsibility for a part of the Ottoman Empire, like an independent Armenia, is bound to get us involved in European affairs in a way that we could not justify our action because such a procedure is not based upon what is right and just.
I do not agree with Lloyd George that Mustapha Kemal has mutinied and is a rebel. He may be a rebel in the strict and technical sense, but it was the action of the Allies that drove the Turks to rebel. I do not justify the Turks in their acts but knowing the Turks...
(I)CONSTANTINOPLE Philip Mansel, St. Martins Press, NY, ISBN 0-312-141574-8
P.47: George of Hungary wrote in the fifteenth century: The Turks do not compel anyone to renounce his faith, do not try hard to persuade anyone and do not have a great opinion of renegades. In the seventeenth, in theview of the traveler and writer Monsieur de La Motraye: There is no country on earth where the exercise of all sorts of Religions is more free and less subject to being troubled, than in Turkey. He knew what he was writing about, since he himself was a Huguenot forced to leave France after 1685.
P.52: As old churches were lost, new ones were built. Without towers or visible domes, they had to be discreet; even today those built before 1800 are hidden behind walls and invisible from the street.
P.55: Howeveralthough hamams and imarets were built beside mosques for Muslim charitable purposes, Christians and Jews were permitted to use them. Muslim goes to Armenian churches, Surp Hireshdagaber or Surp Kevorg (St.George) at Balata and even spends the night there, to cure epileptic children or consult a medium.
P.334: Artin Pasha Dadian was also a prominent figure in the Armenian community; he had helped draw up the constitution of 1860, and in 1871-5 was president of the Armenian National Council.
P.335: In 1896 the Sultan appointed Artin Pasha Dadian, president of a council to resolve the conflict between the empire and the Armenian revolutionaries. Having secured, amnesty, and liberation of 1.200 political prisoners he sent his son to Geneva to talk to the exiles. He himself claimed to work for reforms in the East at once as an Ottoman civil servant and as an Armenian. When an Armenian radical smiled at the phrase, he said: I know that you young Armenians, you do not believe in my patriotism and believe me a Turkish zealot. ... it is our duty to work faithfully for the state and fear movements of revolt so as not to suffer terrible punishments. He ended with a cry from the heart: Prudent patriotism, is it not also patriotism?In a letter of 1898, intended for the Dashnak party, he is lucid and prophetic: ... Fourth, various organizations are fighting different causes, each in their own way, and in the middle of all this stands the pitiful Artin Pasha, who on one hand begs the Sultan for mercy by telling him that this would be the best thing for his empire and on the other hand fights base individuals who in order to attain their selfish aims are even willing to sell their nation.
P.337: While some Armenians and Bulgarians chose violence, most Greeks were too prosperous to fight for the Great Idea They felt that while the Ottomans reigned, Greeks, through their banks and commerce, governed. In the words of one Greek businessman: We lend them the vivacity of our intelligence and our business skills; they protect us with their strength, like kindly giants...
P.339: In 1915 the British Prime Minister, Asquith wrote that Constantinoples proper destinywas to be Russian)
P.366: ) could be seen on the streets of Constantinople in 1912-13. On 12 November with Ottoman permission, fourteen foreign warships carrying 2.700 sailors anchored in the Bosphorus to reassure the Christian population. On 16 November a delegation from the Armenian Patriarchate asked the embassies for protection. On 18 November, the sailors landed with machine guns. The French took up position in Galata, the British in Pera, Austrians and Germans in Taksim, and Russians along the quays.
P.368: After Ottoman defeats, they helped Balkan states divide the spoils. Unofficial economic protectorates were marked out, for Britain in Mesopotamia, for France in Syria, for Russia in northern Anatolia, for Germany along the Berlin to Baghdad railway. The British ambassador wrote: All powers including ourselves are trying hard to get what they can out of Turkey.
P.370:In August 1914 the British government lost further popularity by confiscating for its own use two Ottoman battleships, which had been paid for by public subscription in the Ottoman Empire and built in British yards
P.375: The last Allied troops withdrew in January 1916. During the fighting at Gallipoli, a greater cataclysm was decided in Constantinople. The Committee had at first enjoyed relatively good relations with Armenians. Between 1909-1914 both the Armenian national assembly and congresses of the Hunchak party had met in the capital. An Armenian, Gabriel Noradoungian, a protégéof Ali Pasha had briefly been Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1912-13 (left for Paris soon after) In 1914 some Armenians helped Russian troops in Anatolia against Ottoman forces. There was an Armenian rising in Van. In Constantinople itself some Armenians were seen gloating over the first Russian victories.
P.382: In 1919,... .The defeat of the Ottoman Empire was so total that some Allied statesmen hoped to inflict worse terms on the Ottoman Empire than on Germany, including the loss of Constantinople. The British Prime Minister Lloyd George was a believer in Mazzinian nationalism, passionately pro-Greek and an intimate of Sir Basil Zaharoff. In 1918 he had promised that Constantinople would remain Ottoman; in 1919 he declared Istanbul in the hands of the Turks has been not only the hot bed of every sort of Eastern vice but it has been the source from which the poison of corruption and intrigue has spread far and wide into Europe itself...Constantinople was not Turk and the majority of the population was not Turkish. In the disruption that followed the war, statistics were particularly hard to compile. However, according to an estimate from British officers on the spot, the population in 1920 consisted of 560,000 Muslims, 206,000 Greeks, and 83.000 Armenians. Of approximately 150,000...
in 1919 more than ever, Turks, Greeks and Armenians each wanted a state of their own, not a shared city. Curzons fixation about this plague spot led him into a militant Christianity, which, when governing India, he had rejected. An essay on the Emperor Justinian had won him a prize at Oxford...
P.397: While nationalists left Constantinople to join the army, waves of refugees and orphans, Turkish, Kurdish and Armenian, poured into the city. There were so many that they took over military schools, palaces, and mosques. A special American-funded charity called Near East Relief, fed over 160,000 people a day in Constantinople.
P.398: The city , which had received so many refugees from different regions, from Spain, Poland, and Central Asia, now witnessed the arrival of a procession of 126 boats containing 145,693 Russians (and Russian imperial stud). They came
Some were so hungry and thirsty that they lowered their wedding rings on cords, down to boatloads of Greek and Armenian shopkeepers, in return from bread and water. They slept in the stables of Dolmabahce palace, or prostitutesvacated rooms in the port hotels of Galata.
P.414: The Caliph tried to smile when the police and gendarmerie gave him his last salute. The station manager tried to make them comfortable in his familys private quarters. He was Jewish and Jews were the only minority to retain bond of loyalty to the dynasty. When the Caliph expressed his thanks, the station manager replied in words, which brought tears in all eyes: The Ottoman dynasty is the saviour of Turkish Jews. When our ancestors were driven out of Spain, and looked for a country to take them in, it was the Ottomans who agreed to give us shelter and saved us from extinction. Through the generosity of their government, once again they received freedom of religion and language, protection for their women, their possessions, and their lives. Therefore our conscience obliges to serve you as much as we can in your darkest hour
(J) Excerpts from Britain and the Armenian Question 1915-1923 Croom Helm, London
Akaby Nassibian ISBN0-7099-1820-8
P.14: In the pre-war years, Britain was concerned with the fate of the Armenian people, but she was more concerned in their land en route to India which she believed should on no account fall into the hands of a major rival power.
P.15: The founders of the two main revolutionary parties were not Turkish Armenians. The Hunchakian Revolutionary Party was formed in Geneva in 1887 by seven Russian Armenian students, all in their twenties, who had left Russia to continue higher education in Western Europe. None of them ever lived under the Turkish flag. The Armenian Revolutionary Federation or Dashnaksutiun, a merger of various Armenian groups, primarily inRussia, was founded in Tiflis in 1890.
P.18: The demonstration of Kumkapi in Constantinople in 1890, the rebellionof Sasun in 1894, when the peasants of Sasun simply refused to pay the additional tribute hafir- to the Kurds and resisted the Turkish forces who supported the Kurds, the demonstration of Bab Ali in Constantinople in 1895, the rebellion at Zeytun in 1895-6 and the seizure in 1896 of the Ottoman Bank in Constantinople, were mainly aimed at arousing European interest for the implementation of Article 61 of the Treaty of Berlin.
P.21: Furthermore the Armenian Revolutionary Federation of Dashnaksutiun entered into an understandingfor co-operation with the Young Turks Committee. The Turkish side of the question was that the Armenians had armed themselves that certain members of the Hunchakian Revolutionary Party and the Armenian Bishop had openly urged the people to fight the Turks and set up a Principality.. ...the vice-consul who had rushed to Adana, admitted that among the Armenians there was much vain boasting and wordy provocation.
P.26: Until April 1907 the Turkish customs duties had been 8%. The powers had assented to an increase of 3%, namely to 11%, but not a further increase of 4%, as asked by the Turkish government...In 1879 the Ottoman government was forced, through bankruptcy and financial chaos, to assign six sources of revenue to the service of national debt; and hand over their collection to the Public Dept Administration, managed by foreign, European representatives. Sir Ernest Cassel founded and controlled the National Bank of Turkey. 75% of the shares in the Turkish Petroleum Company, which had exclusive rights over the oil deposits in the vilayets of Baghdad and Mousul, were held by British interests.
P.27:French capital investments in Turkey surpassed those of any other country, including British and German. Within the territorial limits of present-day Turkey, they amounted in 1914 to about 900 million gold francs or approximately 4.5 million paper francs. Of the Ottoman Public Dept 62.9 % was due to France and 22.3% to Britain...
The imperial Ottoman Bank, was Franco-British owned...French capital included Bank of Salonika, the Wharves, Docks and Warehouses , Waterworks, Electricity and Tramways at Constantinople...
External trade was monopolized by foreigners or by Greek, Armenian, and Jewish agents. Of more than 1000 merchants registered in Constantinople in 1911, not more than seventy were Turks. The peasantry fared no better.
P.37: Bryce was aware of many biblical connections and religious legends and traditions. Erevan, built of clay and plastered brick, claimed to have been founded by Noah, as its name in Armenian was said to mean the Apparent, as evidence that it was the first dry land the patriarch had seen.... Everyone seems greatly struck with your great exploit on Mount Ararat...
P.42: (Armenian) a desperate man when his honor or that of his nation was at stake, he was made of metal which had produced warriors and fighters like the heroes of Zeitun in Cilicia, who had neversurrendered to the Turkish yoke!
P.43: they had recorded their confirmed opinion that a Russian occupation of Armenia would unquestionable be to the good. Any evil would be preferable to the state of Turkish Armenia...
P.45 : In 1896 (in England) there had been organized the International Association of the Friends of Armenia, with which was incorporated the Information (Armenia) Bureau. Its object were (i) to furnish information upon the subject of Armenia by means of a Central Depot for the publication and diffusion of literature, (ii) to supply the means of inter-communication between the various societies engaged in Armenian relief.
P.46: In May 1918, the formation of an Armenian Bureau of Information was reported and pro-Armenian Britons welcomed its importance and value...
P.49: Between 1 June 1920 and 23 Nov. 1920 the British Armenia Committee also had an active Propaganda Sub Committee. It met once a week. According to itsminutes, Noel Buxton, who was in the Chair, C. Leonard Leese, Arnold Toynbee, the reverend J.H. Harris and other members of the committee. The Sub-Committee drafted a National Memorial, which was prepared by Toynbee and finally approved by Dr. J.H. Rose, the Cambridge historian. Toynbee had earlier urged that steps should be taken to pin down the government to the statement made by Lord Curzon as a minimum demand for Armenia.
P.50: Lord Bryce appropriately described by Boghos Nubar as the prominent doyen of the Friends of Armenia...
P.51: But if reform was to be made real in Turkey, it could only be by European Control. ...paper reforms could be guaranteed only by the employment of Europeans with ample executive authority.
P.52: The British Armenia Committee sent letter received from one of the Principals of Robert College ... Talaat Bey, a man deficient in self-control had become Minister of Interior; ... was the hour of peril for the Armenians.
P.53: The Turkish Empire had committedsuicide, and dug with its own hand its grave. Lloyd George went further: he did not know what the Turks contributed either to culture, to art, or any aspect of human progress. They were a human cancer, creeping agony to flesh of the lands which they misgoverned, and rotting every fiber of life. The hour had struck on the great clock of destiny for settling accounts with the Turk. Lloyd George was glad that the Turk was to be called to a final account for his long record of infamy against humanity in this gigantic battle.
P.54-55: lt will be seen that co-operation between administration and the Armenophiles culminated in the publication by the Foreign Office in 1916 of a Blue Book; it was edited by Bryce and Arnold Toynbee. Arnold Toynbee published in addition, Armenian Atrocities; The Murder of a Nation and The Murderous Tyranny of the Turks. ...
The Sykes-Picot Agreement had made clear that northern Armenia would be Russian and southern Armenia and Cilicia , French. Still no partof it would remain under Turkish rule.
P.63: The aim of the fund was to attempt to stem in some degree the torrent misery caused by the war among the Armenian population of Turkey and Persia and to provide medical supplies for the Armenian volunteers fighting on behalf of Russia.
P.64: The Churches in Britain closely co-operated with the Fund and the many clergymen took a very active part in organizing collections.
P.65: Early in 1916, the American Committee for relief reported that the Russians were harboring, no fewer than 310.000 refugees, and that destitution and disease were widespread. .. Those who had missed slaughter in 1915 had fled. When in 1916 the Russian armies had advanced deep into eastern Turkey, capturing Erzurum in February and Mush in August, the refugees had started to return to their homelands.... But the defection of Russia from war and the subsequent re conquest of Turkish Armenia and even parts of Russian Armenia by Turkey in 1918, resulted afresh in the flight of thousands. The armistice naturally brought high expectations. Many of the refugees returned to the Kars district in the north-east, and to Cilicia in the south. However, the violent attacks of the resurgent Kemalists in 1920 and 1921 and the abandonment of Armenians by the Allied powers cruelly dashed the hopes of resettlement, resulting, yet once again, the panicky exodus of numberless people.
P.73: It also seems that by September 1915 it had become part of the policy of the British government to use the Armenian massacres as one of the means available to influence public opinion in the United States of America. They used any available means in their desperate military need. Perhaps they also felt, rightly, that Americans might be more sensitive to Armenian suffering and more sentimentally involved than any other people in the neutral countries, as over the years US missionaries had done more for the education and the relief of that people than any other humanitarian or educational organization in the world.
P.77: Arnold Toynbees book Armenian Atrocities: The Murder of a Nationpublished in 1915, was, as its title implies, a lashing indictment of the attempt on the part of Turkish rulers to exterminate the Armenian race once and for all.
P.78: Throughout 1915-16, Bryce had been receiving first hand reports from the American missionaries in Turkey about the deportations and massacres of the Ottoman Armenians...The fundamental fact is that these documents were issued as a Blue Book by the Foreign Office and the editor Bryce- was probably the most trusted Briton in the United States.
P.88: Thus bringing in the liberation of Armenia, a desolated country where Britain had no territorial interests whatsoever, and tying it in with the liberation of strategically important, oil-rich and fertile Mesopotamia, where Britain did have distinct ambitions of her own, the British leaders could confuse the issues, silence those critics who were accusing them of waging an imperialistic war, and could even give notions of idealism and humanity to their war aims.
P.89: The Sun gave the statement by the Turkish government, which laid the blame onrevolutionary uprisings among the Armenians and asserted that the disturbances were incited by the British, French, and Russian governments.
P.89: According to the statement, the removal of Armenians from certain region to others was a measure dictated by imperative military necessity; no coercive measures were taken by the Imperial government against the Armenians until June 1915, by which time they had risen in arms at Van and other military zones. This was afterthey had joined hands with the enemy. On 10 September 1915 the Pope himself had addressed an autograph letter to the Sultan, but no answer had been received. Bryce and Toynbee refuted the Turkish charges point by point in their summary of Armenian history in the Blue Book. They indicated that the Armenian volunteers organized in the Caucasus were, generally, not citizens of Turkey, but rather Russian Armenians citizens of the Russian Empire. In addition they stressed that there was no organized revolt in Van; Armenians had defended their quarter only after it had been beleaguered and attacked by the Turkish troops.
P.90: Djemal Pasha, as commander of the Fourth Army, was himself furious that the deportees were sent to far-away Mesopotamia, thus hindering the movement of the Ottoman troops, instead of being resettled in central Anatolia.
P.92: A landing Cilicia, were it successful, might have also provided the Allies, bogged down in Gallipoli, with some relief from the Turkish pressure. On 7 Sept. 1915, the French Admiral of the Syrian coast cabled the High Commissioner in Cyprus that 6.000 Armenians were bravelyfighting against the Turks at Jebel Musa near the bay of Antioch. On request the Admiral had supplied them with munitions and provisions, but they had asked for the removal of their 5.000 old men, women and children to Cyprus.
P.95: General Maudes staff officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Maitland Edwards had just returned from the Caucasus, where after having made exhaustive enquiries had come to the conclusion that the only really loyal troops in the Caucasus were the Armenians. It was unfortunate that the Russians themselves had not grasped the importance of having all their available Armenian soldiers on the Caucasus front. Of about 150.000 Armenians in the Russian Army, less then 35.000 were there.
P.97: ... mainly in order to stimulate further the war efforts of the Armenians on the fast-disintegrating Caucasian front that the British leaders found themselves necessarily having to make generously sympathetic statements about the liberation of Armenia.
Nubar that Persian, Mesopotamian and Caucasian fronts were all parts of one campaign on which the future of Armenia depended.
P.100: The agreement was finalized on 23 December 1917.Help to Armenians therefore, would be a British duty. ... Boghos Nubar hoped, with the assistance of Allied officers it might be possible to hold Armenia, against the reduced Turkish troops on the front.
P.101:... the Turks had kept their Third Army under Vehib Pasha earmarked for the Caucasus. In the early summer of 1918 they had something between 55.000 and 60,000 seasoned infantry divisions...
Through the bottomless advance into Trans Caussia the Turks are going to lose all of Arabia Palestine and Syria, Liman von Sanders wrote in June 1918... Britain proved unable either to organize Armenian and Georgian forces or to finance them. ... Yet he only reached Baku, with less than 1000 rifles on August 17, 1918. By then all the Caucasus was under Turco-German domination. Baku fell to the Turks on 16 September. Dunsterforce had come too late and proved too small.
P.102: Thus General Dunsterville arrived at Baghdad from India on 18 January 1918. He was stranded in north-west Persia and his mission entirely failedto reach Tiflis, its original object. Winter storms, road difficulties, the problem of the supply of food and petrol, the hostility of the Kurds and the Jangalis, Persian neutrality ... Apparently for three months the military authorities could not decide whether there should be effective help for Armenia or not.
P.103: Thus Britain could neither organize the Caucasian including the Armenian forces, nor give them effective help.
P.104: By early 1918 the Armenian Corps consisted of two divisions of Armenian rifles, three brigades of Armenian volunteers, a cavalry brigade and some battalions of militia... Yet all this time the Armenians were shedding blood for their existence around Erevan. How can you abandon us? Alexander Khatisian (the Head of the Armenian Delegation in Batum, and later a Prime Minister) asked Noi Zhordania, the Georgian Menshevik leader.
P.105: The Treaty of Batum, by which the fighting stopped, was signed between the Republic of Armeniaand Turkey on 4 June 1918. It stipulated that Armenia would have an area of 10.000 square kilometers; Ottoman troops and material would be transported unhindered over Armenian territory; and the Ottoman army would reserve the right to use its own forces if the Armenians proved incapable of maintaining order and facilitating transportation. Turkish cannons were installed four miles from Etchmiadzin and four miles from Erevan. During the desperate days in May 1918, when Erevan and Etchmiadzin the very heartland of Russian Armenia- were threatened, the Armenians were able not only to stop the advance of the Turks at the battles of Sardarabad, Bash-Abaran and Karakilisa, but also even to repulse them.
P.106: ...Thus General Andranik (Ozanian) the quiet, dignified and soldierly hero of the Turkish-Armenians, the officer for whom the British War Office had a good dealof respect, had been fighting of the Foreign Office Staff.
The Turks the whole way back to Erzurum to Karabagh. He absolutely refusedto make peace with the Turks, minuted a member of the Foreign Office staff. Denouncing both signatories and the Treaty of Batum for handing over the Armenian Plateau to Turkey, Andranik continued his fight in Zangezur.. Likewise, in Baku, it was the nationalist Armenians, in an unholy alliance with the local Soviet, which to a large extent kept the Turks out of the oil center until 16 Sept.1918 that is only about a month before the Armistice of Mudros was signed. For Caucasian Armenia, there was first of all immense human burden of the thousands of refugees, the remnant of the decimated population of Turkish Armenia...
But despite these inauspicious conditions and mistakes, the Armenian forces took over the Caucasian front after the breakdown of the Russian army, and as Lord Cecil acknowledged, for five months, from February to June 1918, delayed the advance of the Turks, thus rendering an important service to the British army in Mesopotamia The British authorities were aware that their promises to organize and finance the Caucasian and Armenian forces were not realized. Boghos Nubars and General Shores special requests for strong military missions were particularly unfulfilled.
P.107: ... as citizens of the Russian Empire, enlisted in the Russian army, but they had also formed volunteer forces mainly composed of Armenians from Diaspora (the Balkans, France and United States) and had borne the brunt of some of the heaviest fighting in the Caucasus. M. Philips Price, the special correspondent of the Manchester Guardian , had captured in his diary the mood of these volunteers in the basin of Van at the beginning of the war. Every one felt the presence of the spirit of Armenia, for which they were fighting. It was following this refusal, described as courageous by Robert Cecil, that the Ottoman Armenians had been systematically murdered by the Turkish Government in 1915.
P.108: Throughout the war, the Armenians were sustained in their war effort by the statement of sympathy of the Allied statesmen.. ... Tsar Nicholas II had told Catholics Gevorg V, tell your flock, Holy Father, that a most brilliant future awaits Armenians,, in response to the Catholicsappeal to liberate the Turkish Armenians and take them under Russian protection. By the Russo-Turkish Reform Scheme of 26 January 1914, Turkey had recognized the privileged position of Russia in the Armenian question.
Of course, Armenians did not know then that the Tsar was not all keen to incorporate the Armenian vilayets and did not wish to have much to do with Armenians, as the Russian ambassador had told Sir Arthur Nicholson, the Under-Secretary of foreign Affairs, during a conversation in 1915. Nor did they know that during the Sykes-Picot negotiations, Russia had insisted that Sivas and Lesser Armenia should go to France and in return she should get the Kurdish populated Hacker-Mush in the east. The reason had been Tsarist Russias desire to have as few Armenians as possiblein the Russian territory and to be relieved of Armenian nationalist responsibilities. .
P.109: But the idea that Turkey would have to pay the penalty for her unprovoked entry into war was accepted by the Cabinet even before the actual declaration. As already mentioned, Asquith had referred to the blightof Turkish rule and Lloyd George predicted that the day had come when the Turk would be called to account for his long record of infamy against humanity. Such statements from great leaders all vague and made in general terms- apparently elated the Armenians, a people hitherto without a state and therefore without the experience of statecraft. To serve Armenia is to serve civilization (said Gladstone). Boghos Nubar expressed his conviction that the British government, which was then fighting for civilization, for fundamental rights as well as for the principle of nationality, would support the reconstitution of national unity of the Armenian people. They had placed all our hopes on the Allied Powers he wrote to Bryce.
P.111: The Allied leaders had simply to make use of any possible source of manpower ... the withdrawal of Russian forces from occupied Turkish territory, a separate peace, and the creation of an enormous vacuum in the balance of power in Eastern Turkey and the Caucasus. Harold Nicolson minuted: The Russian Revolution has changed the whole aspect of the Armenian question.
P.112: ... on the one hand to induce the Armenians to go on fighting with tottering Caucasian front andon the other hand to avoid too much commitment. Liberation from the Turkish yoke implies either annexation by another Power or some form of self-government.
P.113: ... were meant to maintain the morale of the Armenians combating the Turks. After all, by the beginning of 1918, British arms had successfully conquered those territories in the Ottoman Empire where she had distinct ambitions.
P.115: ... the gallant resistance of the Armenians in defence of their liberties and honour...He also referred to the Armenian soldiers still fighting in the ranks of the British, French and American armies, and to the part they had borne in General Allenbys great victory in Palestine.
P.116: ... Britain had felt compelledto endorse the claims to independence of the various nationalities. Further, Lloyd George had maintained during a Supreme War Council Meeting that Nobody was bound by a speech.
P.119: During 1914-18 Britain was likewise guided by considerations of national interest, In the greatest war of her history she sought to use all her resources, both material and moral, to defeat her enemies. So, she extensively made use of the Armenian holocausts of 1915 to discredit her enemies, Turkey directly and Germany indirectly. She publicized the massacres as part of her policy of winning the sympathy of the United States of America and of the other neutral countries away from Central Powers and of keeping the loyalty of her Moslem subjects. Thus Britain was guided by her considerations of national interest. However, the war radically changed the focus of her interests in Armenia. She lost her interest in Armenian territory. In order to satisfy her allies, she even agreed to, and approved of, the partition of historic Armenia. On the other hand, the war brought a dramatic growth of sympathy with the Armenian people. After the war, however, national interests would no longer warrant concern for Armenia.
P.120: In 1917, Revolutionary Russia had disclaimed annexations in the Armenian provinces. ...According to Lord Bryce, that France had also dropped her idea of obtaining Cilicia. So, when the United States entered the war, the Armenian organizations in France had hoped that she might be induced, by philanthropic motives and interest of her missionaries, to take in hand for a time. Bryce thought that this was very unlikely, but his old friends of the influential American Mission Board in Boston believed the scheme not impossible.
P.121: ...awkward arguments to justify the reluctance to help; half-hearted measures instead of effective action. Britain was not willing to spend money or men in a far-away and inaccessible country which was of no interest to her either strategic or on economic grounds; a desolate country which was only rich in misery. Thus at the end of the war, the Armenian question looked like an additional liability for British statesmen.
Even before the war many Turkish troops had been in the m o s t w r e t c h e d c o n d I t I o n In 1916 some were fighting with no overcoats and no boots, and thousands were deserting. By 1918 Turkey was in the grip of war-weariness and bankruptcy. Prices had risen by nearly 2.000 per cent.
P.124: Exhausted and defeated on other fronts, Turkey was victorious in the Caucasus and master in the six Armenian vilayets .and Cilicia. Who would undertake the protection of the Armenians were provision made for the detachment of these regions ? The problem was further complicatedby the fact that the native Armenian population had either been massacred or become refugees in the Caucasus.
P.126: When the collapse of Turkey was imminent, the French reminded Balfour that General Allenbys armies had entered the French sphere of influence as defined in the Sykes-Picot Agreement...
P.136: The Armenian refugees and deportees could not return to their homes, and remained as a crushing burden on the tiny Republic of Erevan. Recommendations of Foreign Office staff, Robert Cecil, Eyre Crowe, Headlam Morley, Orsmby-Gore, Mark Sykes to Toynbee, to provide protection over the Armenian provinces, were disregarded. The improvisation by Lloyd George that once the Allies were in Constantinople they could do what they liked as regards Armenia, remained merely a statement... In February 1920, even before the peace, the Kemalists massacred thousands of Armenians in Cilicia and in October 1920 they tramped on the Treaty of Sevres by invading the Republic of Erevan...
P.138: Lieutenant-Colonel A. Rawlinson specially sent to Anatolia to supervise the demobilization, was defiantly informed by Kazim Pasha in Erzurum that the munitions in Turkish possession could not be permittedto cross the frontier. Later, in March 1920, Rawlinson and his men were detained and imprisoned by the Kemalists in Erzurum as a retaliation for the occupation by the Allies of Constantinople. They were all but starved to death and were hardly able to crawl. Rawlinsonss book reads: The Turkish Armistice a Fiasco Foundation of the Nationalist Party.
P.139: Oliver Baldwin, the Prime Ministers son, who served in the Armenian army at Erevan in late 1920 and early 921, maintained that the 1920 Turkish Armenian war was the continuation of the 1914 war, broken out afresh as a resultof Britains weakness in her dealings with Turkey.
P.141: Boghos Nubar, the President of the Armenian National Delegation in Paris, who had assiduously worked in the cause of Armenia, warmly congratulated Great Britain Champion of justice: theday was 11 November 1918. The mightiest country in the world and the other victorious powers were sympathetic towards Armenia; and the Turkish government if not cowed, was subservient.
P.145: But Curzon opposed the Foreign Office view of a large Armenia where Armenians would be in a decided minority. If there were not a large Armenian state, the Turks would have a direct connection between Anatolia and the Turkish population in the Caucasus, which was exactly what the British wished to avoid, so far asPan-Turanism was concerned. Robert Cecil agreed with Curzon that it would be very difficult to have one mandatory for Armenia and another for Caucasus Republics. He admitted that the Americans did have a sentimental interest in Armenia, but he was convinced that they would never go to the Caucasus.
P.147: They had argued that a French mandate over Armenia and the Caucasus would be the best practical solution, since it was virtually certain that Britain would not accept a mandate over Armenia. Yet there was little hope for United States accepting it either. So, according to the military view, France should have neither the Caucasus, nor Mesopotamia, Palestine, nor even Syria.
P.150: Thus Britain had no positive policy at all as regards Armenia. Shewould refrain from assuming responsibility. She would like to see a large Armenia under the protection of the United States for which there was little hope- or under the protection of France.
P.156: The Turkish Armenian leader General Andranik and his partisans entered Zangezur in July, destroyed a number of Moslem settlements, and brought the central region of the country under Armenian control. On 2 December 1918 Andranik and his volunteers crossed the Karabagh border. Within a few days the KarabaghArmenians might have come under the jurisdiction of the Republic of Armenia. General Thomson, however, commanding at Baku, sent instructions to Andranik to stop all military operations and return to Zangezur. Thomson approved Azerbaijani governments choice of Dr. Khosrov Bek Sultanov, a notorious Armenophobe, as the Governor General of the two regions. At the end of 1918 the Armenian government had expelled a number of Moslems from Daralagiaz and repopulated the villages with Armenian refugees. But the Tatars of Sharur and Nakhichevan would not allow the resettlement of Armenians in their countries and were prepared to fight.
P.159: On 5 February, the military representatives agreed that Italian troops should replace the British in Transcaucasia and Konia. It was in order to catch the war-weary public mood that Lloyd George had apparently promised, during 1918 elections an immediate demobilization and return to a peace footing, and Sir Henry Wilson accused him of conducting a cursed campaign for vote-catching.
P.163:The British withdrawal presented, therefore, an opportunity for the Kurds, Tatars and Turks of these disputed territories, to try to sabotage and invalidate, with active help of Turkish officers and arms, any territorial arrangement which might favor Armenia. In their turn Armenian bands in Kars, without discipline and not under effective control apparently pillaged insurgent Moslem villages and committed atrocities.
...On 4 March 1919, Stephen Bonsal, the distinguished American journalist serving as secretary to president Wilson, referred in his diary to the blood-curdlingatrocities committed against Armenians by the Turks which he had seen with his own eyes in Turkey. No, I do not close my eyes to the crimes which the Armenians have committed...from time to time when the rare occasion presented against the diabolical Kurds and the Turkish irregulars... Indeed I approve of them
P.164:In Paris, the Armenian representatives desperately requested that the British, before withdrawal, would arm their republic against the imminent danger from Turkish and Tatar armies. The arms in possession of the Armenian army 14.380 rifles, 158 machine guns, 43 field and mountain guns- were all in bad condition and spare parts were lacking.
P.170: Only a few seconds later, however, he pressed that Britain should not abandon Mosul, which was a province with great possibilities: it had rich oil deposits. The British government would only be too pleased were responsibility for Armenia assumed by other Allied powers. In February 1919 Italy had agreed to send two divisions of troops to the Caucasus and one battalion to Konia in Anatolia for the supervision of law and order pending peace settlement. Tommaso Tittoni, the Foreign Minister, told Balfour that holding the Caucasus would need about 40.000 men and this was more than Italy could afford.
and Clemenceau, the President of the Conference, concluded:
P.173:In March 1919, forty State Governors, 250 college and university presidents, 85 bishops and 20.000 ministers and priests had petitioned Wilson in this respect. But charity unsupported by political and military assistance was quite insufficient to deal with the unhappy consequences of Turkish cruelty. The British interests in Armenia were purely sentimental.
P.176: (Bonsal had shown Wiseman a copy of the Prime Ministers speech made at the Guildhall in 1916) which with malicious purposeshe had kept on his desk for some weeks. As Wiseman seemed to shy away, Bonsal had read aloud. Britain is resolved to liberate the Armenians from the Turkish yoke and to restore them to the religious and political freedom they deserve and of which they have been so longed deprived. Bonsal commented in his diary that as the extreme difficulty of the task became apparent, both France and Britain earmarked the job for simple Simon, that is, for Uncle Sam.
P.178: Armenia we are doing our best Curzon wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1919. I shall never in any settlement with Turkey lose sight of Armenian interests. In the end Lloyd Georges government decided to solve the dilemma in its own way by sticking to its promises to liberate Armenia. By the Treaty of Sevres of 10 August 1920, a very substantial part of the ancient territory of the Armenian people -to be delimited by President Wilson- was formally accorded to Armenia. The Treaty was signed by the representatives of the governments of Erevan and the European powers.
P.181: When giving the results of his arbitration on 22 November1920 President Wilson, stressed that he had examined the question, as he put it, with a mind to the highest interests of justice and in the light of the most trustworthyinformation available. He decided that 42.000 square kilometers of territory should be added to the Republic of Armenia from Turkish Armenia. Armenians were vibrant with patriotism all over the world. Kajazuni, would a few years later, comment with the wisdom of experience: The Treaty of Sevres had dazzled the eyes of all of us, restricted our power to think, clouded our consciousness of reality
P.186: Lloyd George perceived the United States as the source of money required. He had been told that Armenia would need a loan of Sterling 10 Million. Who was prepared to advance such asum? America should be informed that the Allied powers now had an impossible burden on their shoulders. She should take care of that burden. If she was refused, let her refusal be definitely placed on records. Then she could not continue to complain of the inability of the Allies to protect Armenia. Lloyd George, simultaneously devised another scheme: the Allies should find equipment for the Armenians who should be armed and given a chance of fighting their own battles. If they were not in a position to defend their own frontiers, then he thought that there was no use for a nation of that kind in the world. Was then the policy of the Allied powers and especially of Britain towards Armenia cynical? Yet, the powers had drafted a treaty, for the implementation of which, as regards the Armenian clauses, they would spare neither a single battalion nor any money..
P.198: But it also contributed to Armenias illusions and her actual and fatal isolation. Since October 1919 Mustafa Kemal had set himself, in defiance of the Ottoman government, in the district of Erzurum, to organize resistance to all forms of foreign interference, and chiefly to the formation of an independent Armenian state within Turkish boundaries.
Nationalist Turkey was determined to sabotage the Peace Treaty being imposed by the Entente. The Nationalist movement was created by the Greek landing in Smyrna in 1919. Toynbee wrote after his eight monthstudy trip to Greece and Turkey in 1921.
P.203: Armenia would also receive gratis from Soviet Russia about ten locomotives as well as a sum of 2.5 million gold rubles as an aid. This oral agreement was to be put in writing. But the signing of the treaty was postponed. On 1 May , just after the sovietisation of Azerbaijan, Armenian Communists made an abortive attempt in Alexandropol to take over the country. The Armenian government executed seventeen ringleaders. Those who escaped to Baku were trying to defeat Russo-Armenian negotiations in Moscow, according to Terterian, by their reports of persecution in Armenia. This would have assured, first, the Soviets official recognition of the independence of Armenia, second, Nakchievans becoming a part of Armenia.
P.204: A Turkish delegation, headed by Bekir Sami, the Commisar for Foreign Affairs in Kemals Government, and representing the Turkish National Grand Assembly, was likewise in Moscow at the same time as the Armenian delegation. Zarafian and Terterian considered it desirable that their delegation should have some special interviews with the Turkish delegation with a view to settling their mutual disputes. But Levon Shant vigorously opposed the idea. Thus up to the summer of 1920 it had not been possible for Armenia to come to an understanding either with Soviet Russia or with Turkey: the very states surrounding her, with one or both of which, good relations were imperative. When the Turkish delegation left Moscow, they too had not signed a treaty: most significantly, the main obstacle had been the Soviet insistence on Turkish concessions to Armenia.
P.212: But the Foreign Office easily found the justification needed for explaining Britains unwillingness and inability to help Armenia effectively. (William Haskell) on his way back home to the United States he had called at the Foreign Office to tell D.G. Osborne that: The country is a desert and the people nothing but professional beggars... There is no administrative or political capacity in the country, no money, and no resources to develop. Foreign Armenians who have amassed fortunes.... Will neither contribute nor return to the national home. Osborne prepared a brief for his seniors that: His Majestys Government is not a charity organization and that instead of perpetual appeals for foreign pity and assistance weshould like to see....
P.213: ... evidence of some self-reliance and political ability in Armenia; that the continued existence of Armenia is an autonomous state dependent on Armenian efforts and capacity and cannot be based on foreign armies or foreign money
On 12 November Aharonian called on Sir John Tilley at the Foreign Office and after expressing his warmest thanks for the arms and fuel oil Britain had supplied, described the terrible situationin which Armenia found herself. He said their only hope was in armed intervention by Britain. Tilley told him that was entirely out of question. Aharonian then suggested the formation of an army of Armenian volunteers from different parts of the world concentrating at a base on some Greek island. That too was wholly impracticable. Aharonian then asked how the powers contemplated executing The Turkish Treaty. Tilley told him that the powers could execute immediately that which related to Constantinople and the Straits. Then they would organize Turkishforces with which they hoped it would be possible gradually to pacify Anatolia. So, the Treaty of Sevres regarding the Armenian clauses and the Eastern vilayets, would only be carried out through pacifying Anatolia by Turkish forces. When Aharonian urged how important it was for Britain to prevent the Turks and Russians joining hands, Tilley replied he was afraid Aharonian must expect nothing. Referring to the above interview, he recorded on another page: I made it quite clear that it was fully out of questionthat HMG should send any military aid of any kind or accept a mandate or do anything whatever to render assistance even the sending of arms being now precluded by the Turkish advance. Earlier Lord Curzon had expressed his view that no reply need be returned. Meanwhile the Turkish armies were sweeping deep into pre-war Russian Armenia. Appeals were sent to King George V by the Catholics at Etchmiadzin, and to speaker of the House of Commons on behalf of 25,000 Armenians in California. In their desperation the Armenians and their friends also tried to mobilize the League of Nations.
P.214: The French ambassador told Sir J. Tilley on 9 November 1920 that his government agreed with the point of view of the Foreign Office, namely that...no useful discussion was possible while boundaries were still unsettled and Armenia was an unknown quantity. Tilley concluded in his minute: I do not feel that it is a matter we want to hear very much about: and whatever may have been expected of us originally we intend to do as little as we can for Armenia either in men or money.
P.215: Thus the abandonment of Armenia was total and complete in respect of protection and help: but not in respect of advice and guidance. Britain had neither the power nor the will to protect Armenia and the Caucasian republics. Nevertheless, she discouraged them from coming to terms with either Soviet Russia or Kemalist Turkey, the only states with real power in the Caucasus. After his visit to that region in October-December 1920, C. Leonard Leese, the Organising Secretary of the British Armenia Committee and special correspondent of Manchester Guardian revealed that an offer by Kemalist Turkey in the spring of 1920, to negotiate directly with Armenia, was declined by the latter after consultation with the British Chief Commissioner for Transcaucasia. Russia alone had forces to intervene Arnold Toynbee, back from his long trip in the East, told a meeting.
P.216: And Armenia rejected all Soviet Russias proposals of mediation to fix her frontiers with her neighbours and, in particular the frontiers of Turkish Armenia, Chicherin claimed. To the end, the British representatives faithfully tried to carry out Curzons instructions: The rescue, if possible, of ... Erivan from the Influence of Soviet Government.
P.218: ... the Armenian government had finally to sue for a fresh armistice on 18 November. Alexander Khatisian was appointed to negotiate peace with the Kemalists. The Armenian government realized that it was obliged to make peace either with Turks and Bolsheviks. The Bolsheviks assured the Armenians that they could settle the Turkish trouble immediately if Armenia will denounce(?) the Turkish Peace Treaty. The Armenian government wanted to adopt a course, which would, so far as possible, meet with the approval of Britain. Replying, Curzon stated that Britain could not be a party to a treaty with the Nationalists, but considered that the alternative of a treaty with Soviet Russia was doubtless worse. Earlier two members of the Foreign Office had similarly indicated that a peace with the Turks was clearly preferable. The offer was rejected. Armenia finally agreed to the half loafleft by Turkey as she believed that the whole loaf offered by Bolshevik Russia would mean the loss of all sympathy in Europe.
P.219: The crushing Treaty of Alexandropol left Armenia with a territory of 27.000 square kilometers: Kars and Surmalu, including Mount Ararat would go to Turkey; Nakhichevan and Zangezur would become Azerbaijani protectorates; Armenia would be permitted to have a detachment of only 1.500 soldiers equipped with 20 machine-guns and 8 cannons; compulsory military service forbidden. Turkey would have the right to supervise goods entering Armenia. Finally, Armenia would declare the Treaty of Sevres null and void; the representatives of the Allies should leave. The only Armenian state permitted by Karabekir was a tiny protectorate wholly dependent on Turkish goodwill. The renunciation of the Treaty of Sevres by Armenia had been the pre-condition for Turkish negotiations. But it had also been the only major condition asked by Soviet Russia in return for her mediation in securing the pre-war Russian frontier. She had in addition agreed to recognize her independence. The offer was rejected. Had it been accepted, Kars and Surmalu might have been within Armenian territory, the war might have ended earlier and Karabekirs troops would not have wrought death and destruction as thoroughly as if they were committed to annihilation.
P.220: The Treaty of Sevres made Armenia a prey to Turkish attack. It provided her with boundaries at the expense of Turkey; but not with the means of defense. On the other hand, a Foreign Office paper to counter the charge of Armenias abandonment by the Allies, blamed the international dissensions between Dashnaks and the Democrats; and Lord Curzon angrily referred to the reluctance of wealthy Armenians to help their country financially.
P.229: Writing in 1921, Wilson insisted that Britain should have a strong friendly Turkey, stretching from Smyrna to Bakuon her side. Evidently there was no room for Armenia in his plan. With such views prevalent among General Staff, what were the arms sent to Armenia in the summer of 1920? H.W. Harcourt wrote on 1 December 1920: ... the utility of the shipment was largely destroyed by the fact that the War Office took this opportunity to unload on the Armenians the Canadian Ross rifles marksmens rifles- which had been tried in France and proved useless for general field service.
P.230: Finally, worries regarding British trade with Turkey were expressed by the Department of Overseas Trade. The Kemalists had brought trade between Britain and Turkey virtually to a standstill by almost completely interrupting the communications with the interior. The value of the stranded British goods in Turkish ports was estimated between 5 and 12 million Sterling. The Prime Minister was also reminded that the value of pre-war British exports had amounted to 8.5 million Sterling. Even King found the proposals of his Minister of War, advocating an attitude of friendship towards Kemalist Turkey and an immediate withdrawal of all British troops from Turkish territory, as very sound and made his view known to the Cabinet.
P.233:The French were the first to demand the revision of the Treaty of Sevres. They concluded the Franklin-Bouillon Agreement on 20 October 1921. According to an infuriated Curzon a territory of 10,000 square miles in Cilicia and containing the military approaches to Mesopotamia was handed over to the Kemalists. The French had stolen a march on their Allies and had by underhand methods obtained preferential treatment for their interests.
P.234: The British Cabinet soon agreed to propose to the Allies that the Kemalists should be invited unconditionally to a Conference; and if necessary Angora might be informed that on a satisfactory settlement being reached, Britain would be prepared to consider favorably the grant to Turkey of financial assistance for rehabilitation. The French and Italian policy of winning the favors of Turkey continued unabated. Curzon considered his task of negotiating a new peace treaty with Turkey very difficult and the prospect of achieving success remote, recalling the consistent and almost treacherous attitude of the French.
P.235: An entry in a diary kept during the Conference has referred to Barrere and Garroni, the French and Italian representatives, who: ...today Ismet, bawling Excellence at him at every sentence, shouting ami et cher collegue This makes Curzon sick with disgust. Allied unity was an illusion. This was not the scene of an alliance of victors imposing or negotiating a peace in unity but perhaps a spectacle nearer prostration. Bonar Law, now Prime Minister, was well aware of the situation. He warned Curzon: ...there are two things, which seem to me vital. The first is that we should not go to war for the sake of Mosul, and second, that if the French, as we knowto be the case, will not join us, we shall not by ourselves fight the Turks to enforce what is left of the Treaty of Sevres. And to quote Churchills words, in the Treaty of Lausanne history will search in vain for the word Armenia. It seems that neither Armenia, nor Britain and the Allies, nor even Russia had adjusted their aspirations and objectives to the realities of their resources. Kemal Ataturk alone had measured all too exactly the immense strategic strength of his country and knew precisely what actual power he could achieve. Armenia was the greatest loser in 1923, Turkey the beneficiary.
P.248: The first two shiploads of refugees had arrived in Batum where they were refusing to land as there were no food supplies for them on shore. The British government had now granted 35,000 Sterling the first offer had been 5,000- on condition that guarantees were given by the Armenian government that the first two boats would be cleared and the third and last boat, which would shortly be on its way, would be cleared immediately on arrival. The situation was made worse by the attitude of the Georgian government, which was proving most troublesome and unsympathetic to the famine-stricken Armenia. The report about the famine conditions in the Caucasus, submitted 1922 to Nansen, specified the work done by relief agencies
P.251: In the Greek Islands thousands of Armenian refugees had taken shelter. But after the sacking of Smyrna and the consecutive flight of the native population onto the Greek mainland, there was no room for Armenians any more. The Greek delegate at the League of Nations Council Meeting in Geneva asked for immediate evacuation of the Armenian refugees from Greece, and offered up to 60,000 sterling for transportation assistance.
P.252: The refugees in Syria, numbering about 100.000, were the largest remaining body, gathered in camps, in the Near East.
P.253: According to Nansen, who acted as President of the Armenian commission appointed by the International Labour Office, over 400,000 Armenian refugees had emigrated to Russian Armenia and the Caucasus from Turkey. The total number of Armenian refugees who had fled abroad, he estimated at between 300,000 to 400,000. They were scattered in countries including Greece, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Palestine, Syria, Mesopotamia. The Americans, in their turn, had been most generous. By the beginning of 1921 they had contributed not less than $ 50 million through the Near East Relief. During 14 years of its existence, 1915-1929, it had raised and expended $ 85 million.
(K)ANATOLIAN SUITE Kildare Dobbs Little Brown & Co. Canada ISBN 0316-18779-8
P.198: The cow dung fuel was called tezek. Curzon, present as a member of an international boundary commission charged with delineating the borders of Ottoman and Persian authorities, was tremendously amused by the idea of tezek.
There are Armenians, he wrote, who are knowing in tezek.- From prolonged mingling with Ottoman officials and potentates,
P.200: Armenian populations were concentrated in greater Armenia, and in lesser Armenia or Cilicia to the South. They were also found in most of the cities of Anatolia and the Ottoman dominions. Ottomans began to see them, the way Curzon did, as the enemy within.- William Gladstone emerged from semi-retirement to stigmatize Turks as the one great anti-human specimen of humanity, wherever they went a broad line of blood marked the track behind them..
P.201: One Victorian worthy wrote another, Here is a nation in the freshness of a new life, burning to go on the noblest of crusades and our loathsome Jew (Disraeli) wants us to stop them. - In 1896 twenty Armenian terrorists seized the Ottoman Bank in Istanbul to draw attention to their plight. It was the signal for a general massacre of Armenians throughout Constantinople, directed by the Porte.
P.202: Talaat, minister of the interior, directed the slaughter on a systematic plan. First the Armenian intellectuals and leaders were taken away and killed. Armenian conscripts in the army were next disarmed, formed into labor brigades, marched out of towns and slaughtered. A recent article by Milton Viorst in the New Yorkerrefers to the genocide in these terms: what has become known in the West as the Armenian massacres; and goes on with a show of impartiality to conclude that whatever the truth, the Allies seized upon the issue in their propaganda, and the powerful image of massacre persists to this day.
(M) The Ottoman Centuries Lord Kinross, Morrow Quill Paperback, NY 1977 - ISBN 0-688-08093-6
P.607: Such was the climate of feeling in which Enver Pasha now embarked on his reckless gamble. On hearing the news of it, Javid Bey, always a moderate, resigned from the Young Turk government, with prophetic valedictory words: It will be our ruin, even if we win.Here indeed after six centuries of life, was the last fateful phase in the decline and fall of the Ottoman Empire. The war started badly for the Ottomans. First, in 1914, the impulsive Enver Pasha lost almost a whole Turkish army in an improvident winter campaign against the Russians in the Caucasus. Then Jemal Pasha, governor of Syria and bent on the conquest of Egypt, sent an expeditionary force across the waterless Sinai Desert to Suez Canal. Checked on the banks by forewarned British forces, it was obliged to withdraw across the desert, back to his army headquarters in Beersheba.
P.608: In 1916 the Russians returned to the offensive on the Caucasus front, capturing the stronghold of Erzurum, as a base for the invasion of Anatolia, and the port of Trabzon, with its command of the Black Sea supply routes. Their advance was only checked by the outbreak of the Russian Revolution in March, 1917. This saved the Turks from defeat in Asia and granted them a further reprieve. But their armies were becoming depleted by desertions amounting to hundreds of thousands, while their supply sources were near to a state of collapse.
(N)from EMPIRES of the SAND Efraim & Inari Karsh, ISBN 0-674-00541-4 Harvard Univ. Press
P.85: Even France the foremost cham P.253: According to Nansen, who acted as President of the Armenian commission appointed by the International Labour Office, over 400,000 Armenian refugees had emigrated to Russian Armenia and the Caucasus from Turkey. The total number of Armenian refugees who had fled abroad, he estimated at between 300,000 to 400,000. They were scattered in countries including Greece, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Palestine, Syria, Mesopotamia. The Americans, in their turn, had been most generous. By the beginningof 1921 they had contributed not less than $ 50 million through the Near East Relief. During 14 years of its existence, 1915-1929, it had raised and expended $ 85 million.
pion of nationalism, showed little sympathy for the for the insurgents. Istanbul was up to its neck in debt - £200 million bearing an annual interest of £ 12 million as against £ 22 million in annual revenues.
On Oct. 6, 1875 the Porte declared that it was no longer able to meet its financial obligations. As Turkeys primary creditor, France was far more interested in salvaging its financial investments in the ailing empire.
P.92: The Ottomans watched with horror this wholesale portioning of their European empire but were powerless to arrest the avalanche. Nor could Sultan Abdul Hamids choice of representatives (at Berlin conference) have been worse. True, the chief negotiator Caratheodory Pasha (Greek) was an efficient foreign official who won the respect of his peers, but his timidity and muddled instructions he received fromIstanbul prevented him from playing any meaningful role in the talks. The second delegate, the minister in Berlin, Sadullah bey was a miserable alcoholic who drank himself to death shortly after the congress. The third representative Mehmet Ali Pasha, was a deserter from the Prussian army who had converted to Islam and had risen to military prominence in the Sultans service.
P.109: Germany was the power on which Enver pinned his hopes for imperial regeneration. Following the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, the gathering of storm over recoup its European losses, provided that it aligned itself with the right great power.
P.111: The treaty was to be activated in the event of both Russian attack on either Turkey, Germany or Austria-Hungary and an attack by Germany or the Triple Alliance on Russia. Germany would leave its military mission in the Ottoman army for the duration of the war. In return, the Ottoman Empire would place its Supreme Military Command and the actual command of one-fourth of its army under the German mission. Given that Germany was already in a state of war with Russia on Aug.2nd, it expected its new ally to abide by its treaty obligations and declare war on Russia.
P.112: This was not to be. To Berlins deep dismay, on Aug. 3, Turkey mobilized its forces and proclaimed an armed neutrality. Through its treaty with Germany, the Ottoman Empire had effectively transformed itself into a belligerent in the Continental conflict, though this was not recognized for some time because of the secrecy of the agreement. An unexpected event provided an early boost to Envers machinations; on Aug.3, the British requisitioned the two warships the Ottomans had ordered from them and while this decision had nothing to do with anti-Ottoman sentiments. The requisitioning fell into Envers lap like a ripe plum. To the Ottomans the vessels were a source of great national pide.
P.141: Fought under snowy conditions the battle of Sarikamish turned out disastrous for the Ottomans. The Third Army lost more than 80.000 men within a matter of days: nearly 90 per cent of those participating in fighting. As the Russians crossed joint border and began advancing on Erzurum. Enver escaped by the skin of his teeth, arriving in Istanbulin early January 1915. Anxious to hide the magnitude of his defeat, he ordered a blackout on news from the front and quickly blamed the debacle on the lack of German support. Djemal, a member of triumvirate since 1913, the minister of navy resented his transfer from the capital in November 1914 to command the Fourth Army. Djemal saw the attack on the Suez Canal as a potential personal coup. A golden opportunity to outshine Enver and to regain his central place in the national leadership. On the night of Feb, 2, 1915, Djemal at the head of a twelve thousand strong force, attacked the Suez Canal, only to suffer an ignominious defeat.
P.144: Hamiltons plan was approved. On April 24, de Robecks formidable fleet set to sea and following day landed large forces on the Gallipoli peninsula, only to run unexpectedly tough Ottoman resistance. Allies managed to establish precarious bridgeheads on the peninsula. All attempts to make further advances broke against the uncompromising
P.145: British casualties in the campaign including 90.000 evacuated sick amounted to 205.000, which with the addition of 47.000 French casualties, brought the Allied total to 252.000 or half of the troops sent to Gallipoli, against the officially admitted Ottoman losses of 251.000. Yet despite their heavy casualties, the Ottomans were elated, And while Mustafa Kemal and of course Liman von Sanders were the real heroes of Gallipoli, much of the credit was taken by CUP leadership, first and foremost by Enver. In Mesopotamia, in abattle near Crespion, twenty miles south of Baghdad, on Nov, 22-23, 1915, the Sixth Anglo-Indian Division under Maj. Gen. Townshend, a seasoned officer with distinguished record o service in India and the Sudan, was decimated by a well-entrenched Ottoman force, After sustaining 4.600 casualties, nearly half of the divisions effective strength. By the time he had retreated to Kut in December 3, there was little left of the Sixth Division as a coherent fighting force.
P.147: By the time Townsends forces surrendered to the Ottomans on April 28, 1916, after 143 days of siege, the Mesopotamian campaign had ground to a complete halt, Townsends men were marched hundreds of miles to Anatolia, where most of them would perish in Ottoman labor camps.
P.152: In March 1913, for example, the British Consul in Aleppo reported to Ambassador Lowther in Istanbul that certain leading Armenians ere toying with the idea of occupying Adana and establishing a small principality there with access to the sea. At about thesame time, a committee of the Armenian National Assembly, the governing body of the Apostolic Ottoman Christians, submitted to the Russian Embassy in Istanbul an elaborate plan for Ottoman Armenia. The Russians picked up the gauntlet. Styling themselves as champions of the Armenian cause, they demanded ... the six Armenian vilayets into a single province under an Ottoman Christian or European governor, in which each nationality would be allowed cultural and administrative autonomy.
P.158: There were of course noteworthy exceptions in which Muslims, including Turks, helped the long suffering Armenians, but these were very rare, isolated instances and were always rebuffed by the authorities. In some of the transfer stations. Notably Aleppo, the hub where allconvoys converged, thousands of Armenians would be piled up for weeks outdoors, starving, waiting to be taken away. Epidemics spread rapidly. Chiefly spot typhus. Particularly horrific outrages befell the Armenians arriving at the mountainous areas of Northern Mesopotamia, where they fell prey to the gangs of Kurds and chettes.
P.166: During the first two years of the war, more than 8,000 Jerusalem Jews (1/5) died of starvation and epidemics.
P.333: On March 16, 1920, Istanbul was seized by Britishand French troops;: key ministries and service (for example, mail, telegraphs and telephones, the police) were taken over to ensure the normal continuation of life and maintenance of law and order and scores of political activists and sympathizers were arrested and deported, A week later the buoyant British High Commissioner in Istanbul, Admiral J, de Robeck, reported to Curzon that occupation of Constantinople has so far constituted success exceeding expectations. I do not want to exaggerate this success prematurely but without a knockdown it has been a severe blow for the nationalist movementhe wrote. This was a gross miscalculation, Far from ebbing the tide of the nationalist resistance movement, the occupation of Istanbul helped confirm its success,. On April 23, 1920 eleven days after the sultan had dissolved the Parliament, a Grand National Assembly opened in the small Anatolian town of Ankara (since December 1919 the base of national movement), with Kemal elected as president.
P.337: Only Britain, which viewed the Latinsand the deal they had struck with nationalist Turkey as nothing short of perfidy, remained behind the Greeks. On Sept. 9, Turkish forces entered Smyrna, which, except for the Muslim quarter, was burned to the ground under the eyes of the Allied forces, Bursa fell on Sept, 10 and the following day the nationalist forces reached the straits. On Sept, 18, Kemal triumphantly announced that the Greek army in Anatolia was destroyed. On Sept, 7, at the height of the Turkish offensive, Lloyd George still could not bring himself to concede that the Greek army had suffered a complete debacle. We should stand by the European part of the Paris agreement, he warned the ministers. In no circumstances could we allow the Gallipoli Peninsula to be held by the Turks.
P.338: Even Churchill, who was ready to fight for the straits, had little sympathy for the Greeks, having urged a rapprochement with Kemal as early as the spring of 1921. On Oct.11, 1922, an armistice agreement was signed at the Marmara small port town of Mudanya. It undid years of great-power secret negotiations culminating the Treaty of Sevres and brought Turkey back from dead into the family of nations.
P.339: On November 15, the violently anti-Turkish Lloyd George lost the premiership to the sixty-four-year old Andrew
Bonar Law, who had made no bones about conviction that Britain could no longer act alone as the policeman of the world. Bonar Laws view could well imply Britains readiness for a rapid settlement. Contrary to all indications, the negotiations turned out to be long and arduous, rife with confrontations between the chide British and Turkish negotiators;
Lord Curzon and General Ismet Pasha.
(O) from ATATURK The Rebirth of a Nation Lord Kinross, Weeidenfeld & Nicholson, London
P.69: But (Enver) saw himself in the role of Islamic Alexander the Great, moving against Britain in quest of a new Turkish Empire of Asia, For its realization he decreed two immediate offensives; the first northwards against Russia, the second southwards against Egypt. The first offensive, designed to encircle the Russian forces in the Caucasus and executed against the advice of the German commander, General Liman von Sanders, ended in total disaster, In appalling winter conditions virtually a whole Turkish army was lost a crucial force which should have been held in reserve for the defense of the east.
P.99: On arrival Kemal found chaotic conditions. The troops on the spot were mere remnants of any army, exhausted and demoralized, rotting with disease, exploited by unscrupulous officers in league with corrupt contractors and reduced to bedrock in arms and ammunition. At one moment he and his men were involved in a hand-to-hand fight with a large force of Russian infantry amid aforest of bayonets which almost surrounded them. Then on his own responsibility, he ordered a general retreat, gambling on the belief that the Russians would not follow it up. In the course of the retreat a Turkish soldier grumbled to him: What cowardly commanders are these? I was killing Russians all the way, Why do they drag us back? Kemal replied: Very good. But the battle will not be decided just by your killing Russians. This is a big army and there may be reason for the retreat that you dont understand, And who may you be? I am your commanding officer!
P.100: The troops settled down to a winter, which was to be hard and bitter. Izzets force, at the mercy of long and badly planned lines of communication, was deficient not merely in guns but in foodstuffs. Nor could an army any longer subsists here on the country, for the ironical reason that in the earlier stages of the campaign, the Armenians had been massacred or deported en masse, leaving the land a virtual desert, without peasants togrow food or artisans to provide service. One division was reduced to a third of a ration per man and there was almost no fodder for the draft animals. Many of the troops had only their summer uniforms, with foot-rags for boots and, following blizzards, while detachments were found in caves, dead from hunger and cold. It was to the command of this decimated army that Kemal was promoted in the course of the winter, in succession to Izzet, who was now put in over-all command of both the Second and Third Armies. As it happened they did not have to fight a spring campaign. For in March 1917 a political event of world importance supervened the Russian Revolution. The Caucasian front remained more or less static while the Russian armies fell slowly into pieces and finally withdrew towards Tiflis, disorganized soldierscommittees which gave orders to the staff and deprived officers of their badges of rank,...
P.120: The German colonel accompanying him was worried because the photograph in his pocket, of his wife and daughter, had become wet. But Ismet consoled him with the thought that this was an augury of happiness, since they were now baptized in Jordan water.
(P) From: PARIS 1919 Margaret Macmillan, Random House New York ISBN0-375-76052-0
P.355: To Venizelos Lloyd George was like an Old Testament Prophet, with splendid capacities and clear insight of people and events ; to Lloyd George, his counterparts was a big man, a very big man. Greek troops were fighting with the French against the Bolsheviks. The Americans were sympathetic; the Italians were his only major worry. Wilson asked minor clarification on Turkish atrocities, Clemenceau said virtually nothing.
P.366: Now the Ottoman empire in its turn was on a downward path. The city was crammed with refugees and soldiers from the defeated armies, short of fuel, food and hope. Their fate appeared to depend on the Peace Conference.
P.371: Europeans ran the most important industries, and Western leaders kept the government solvent and supervised itsfinances, The Ottomans were now so weak that they were forced to give Westerners even more of the special privileges, which first started in the sixteenth century capitulations, which included freedom from Turkish taxes and Turkish courts. As a Turkish journalist wrote sadly: We have remained mere spectators while our commerce, our trades and even our broken down huts have been given to the foreigners. In 1908 Austria annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina and Bulgaria declared independence. In 1911 Italy, theweakest of European powers, declared war and seized Libya. After the Balkan wars of 1912 and 1913, Albania, Macedonia and part of Thrace, including Salonika, were gone. By 1914, the European part of the empire which had once stretched into Hungary. Was reduced to a small enclave in Thrace tucked under Bulgaria. In six years 425,000 square miles had been lost. Many allied reputations were destroyed at Gallipoli;his was made. As the author of the British official history later wrote, Seldom in history can the exertions of a single divisional commander have exercised. On three separate occasions, so profound an influence on the course of a battle, but perhaps on the fate of a campaign and even on the destiny of a nation. The Constantinople Ataturk found at the end of the war was very different from the city he remembered. There was no coal and very little food.
P.373: Although as a student of history he should have knew better, Curzon argued: Indeed, the record is one of misrule, oppression, intrigue and massacre, almost unparalleled in the history of the Eastern world.His prime minister shared his sentiments; like many Liberals, Lloyd George had inherited his hostility to the Turks from the great Gladstone, Britain still wanted to ensure that hostile warships did not use the Suez Canal, There was a new factor, too: the increasingly important supplies of oil from Mosul in the Ottoman Empire and from Persia.
Britain still needed to protect the route to India through the Suez Canal. There was a new factor, too: the increasingly important supplies of oils from Mosul in the Ottoman Empire and from Persia. There had already been trouble over the Arab parts of the Ottoman empire. Did Britain really want French ships at the eastern end of the Mediterranean, French bases up and down the coast? Curzon was quite sure it did not.
P.374: In the Supreme Council on October 30, Lloyd George and Clemenceau quarreled angrily over Britains insistence on negotiating the Turkish truce on their own. Lloyd George told Clemenceau: Except for Great Britain no one had contributed anything more than a handful of black troops to the expedition in Palestine, I was really surprised at the lack of generosity on the part of the French Government. The British had now some 500.000 men on Turkish soil. The British had captured three or four Turkish Armies and had incurred hundreds of thousands of casualties in the war with Turkey.
P.375: . Because the Turks had been so bad at governing their subject peoples, they should lose control of all their Arab territories Syria, Mesopotamia, Palestine and Arabia itself. Since the Arabs were civilized but not yet organized, they would need outside guidance. The Ottomans also ought to lose territory on their northeast frontier. They had behaved appallingly to the Armenians, and clearly and clearly an Armenian state should come into existence, there might have to be Kurdistan, south of Armenia. Lloyd George hoped that Wilson would take a hint and offer the United States as the mandatory power at least for Armenia and the straits. However, the Americans had not clearly established a clear position on the Ottoman empire beyond an antipathy toward the Turks. American Protestant missionaries, who had been active in Ottoman Turkey since the 1820s, had painted a dismal picture for a bankrupt regime.
P.376: Much of their work had been among the Armenians, so they had reported at first hand the massacres during the war. Back in the United States large sums of money had been raised for Armenian relief. House had cheerfully chatted with the British about ways of carving up the Ottoman empire, and Wilson had certainly considered its complete disappearance. The United States had never declared war on the Ottoman empire, which put it in a tricky position when it came to determining the empires fate. The only one of Wilsons Fourteen Points that dealt with it was ambiguous: The Turkish portions of the present Ottoman Empire should be assured a secure sovereignty but the other nationalities which are now under Turkish rule should be assured an undoubted security of life and an absolutely unmolested opportunity of autonomous development. What were the Turkish portions ? Who should have autonomous development? The Arabs? The Armenians? The Kurds? The scattered Greek communities?
P.377: On Feb. 26, the appearance of an Armenian delegation before the Supreme Council briefly reminded the peacemakers that the Ottoman empire remained to be settled. Boghos Nubar Pasha was smooth, rich and cultivated: his father had been prime ministering Egypt. His partner Avetis Aharonian, was tough, cynical poet from the Caucasus. Boghosspoke for the Armenian Diaspora, Aharonian for the homeland in the mountains where Russia, Persia and Turkey met. In what was by now a familiar pattern they appealed to history the centuries that Armenians had lived there, the persistence of Armenian Christianity to their services to the Allies (some Armenians had fought in Russias armies) and to Allied promises. And, like other delegations, they also staked out a claim for a huge area of land, stretching south and west from the Caucasus down to the Mediterranean, They placed their hopes on United States. Scarcely a day passed, said an American expert, the mournful Armenians, bearded and black clad, did not besiege the American delegation or, less frequently, the President, setting for the really terrible conditions in their own native land.
P.378: When the Ottoman empire entered the war, Enver Pasha, one of the triumvirate pf Young Turks who had ruled Constantinople since 1913, sent the bulk of its armies eastward, against Russia. The result, in 1915, was a disaster: the Russians destroyed a huge Ottoman force and looked set to advance in Anatolia just when the Allies were landing at Gallipoli in the west. The triumvirate gave the order to deport Armenians from Eastern Anatolia on the grounds that they were traitors, potential or actual. Many Armenians were slaughtered before they could leave; others died of hunger and disease on the forced march southwards. Say to the Armenians exclaimed Orlando, that I make their cause my cause. Lloyd George promised that Armenia would never be restored to the blasting tyrannyof the Turks. Fine sentiments, but they amounted to little in the end, At the Peace Conference, even heartfelt agreement in principle faltered in the face of other considerations. Armenia was far away; it was surrendered by enemies and the Allies had few forces in the area. Moving troops and aid in, at a time when resources were stretched thin, was a major undertaking; what railways were had been badly damaged and the roads wereprimitive. Help was away, but Armenias enemies were close at hand. Russians, whether the armies of the Whites or the Bolsheviks, were advancing southward and would not tolerate Armenia or any other independent state in the Caucasus.
P.379: The French Foreign Office, for its part, toyed with ideas of a huge Armenia under French protection, which would provide a field for French investment, and the spread of French culture. The Italian like the French, preferred to concentrate their efforts on gains on the Mediterranean cost of Turkey and in Europe. That left the Americans. Wilsons judgment had deteriorated that, on May 14, when Armenia came up to the Council of Four, he agreed to accept a mandate, subject, he added, to the consent of the American Senate. This ruffled the French because the proposed American Mandate was to stretch from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean, taking in the zone in Cilicia promised to France under the Sykes-Picot Agreement. Although no one suspected it at the time, no arrangement made in Paris was going to make the slightest difference to Armenia.
P.381: One day during the Peace Conference, Arnold Toynbee, and adviser to the British delegation, had to deliver some papers to the prime minister. Lloyd George, to my delight, had forgotten my presence and had begun to think loud. Mesopotamia...yes...oil...irrigation...we must have Mesopotamia; Palestine...yes...Holy Land...Zionism... we must have Palestine; Syria...hm...what is there in Syria? Let the French have that . Thus the lineaments of the peace settlement in the Middle East were exposed: Britain seizing its chance; the need to throw something to the French; a homeland for the Jews; oil; and the calm assumption that the peacemakers could dispose of the former Ottoman territories to suitthemselves. At their meeting in London in December 1918, just before Wilson arrived in Europe, Lloyd George and Clemenceau found time to agree on a division of the Ottoman empires vast Arab territories, stretching from Mesopotamia on the borders of the Persian empire to the Mediterranean . Both men were still buoyed up by their victory over Germany and by the novel but apparently warm friendship between their two nations.
P.385: The British position hardened. The Eastern Committee of the War Cabinet, set up in 1918 to work out British policy in the Middle East, returned repeatedly to the need to contain their ally. If France got Palestine and Syria, Britain, according to Curzon, the committees chairman and moving spirit, would be obliged to keep a large force in Egypt to protect the Suez Canal and the vital route to India. Even before the French realized this, British actions aroused their suspicions. French Catholics had been dismayed when British forces under General Allenby swept the Turks out of Jerusalem just before Christmas 1917. The Protestant perilwas taking over the Holy Land. When Picot rushed to Palestine to try to protect French interests, he found Allenby and his staff uncooperative. In the summer of 1918, as the last great German offensive battered the Western Front and the British prepared another major offensive into Syria, the Quai dOrsay warned that the French public opinion would not accept that France be deprived of benefits which were rightfully hers by those who diverted their troops at the crucial moment.
P.388: The Balfour Declaration, telling the Jews of the world that they could have a homeland in Palestine, was issued by the British government and subscribed to by the French and later Americans. It was not clear how it meshed with the agreements with the Arabs. Promissory notes given in wartime are not always easy to collect in peace but in June 1916, when the Arab revolt started, the British had every reason to feel pleased with their diplomacy, The sheriff promptly proclaimed himself king of the Arabs, although the British would only recognize him as king of the Hejaz. Four of his sons fought the Turks, but the one who stood out was Feisal. Riding at Feisals side was his fair-haired, blue eyed British liaison officer, later to become even more famous as Lawrence of Arabia. A distinguished scholar man of action, a soldier and a writer, a passionate lover of both the Arabs and the British empire, T.E. Lawrence was in Lloyd Georges words, a most elusive and unassessable personality. He remain a puzzle, surrounded by legend, some based in reality, some created by himself.
P.398: He had taken, it was said, his Croix de Guerre and paraded it on a dogs collar. Clemenceau, hoping to avoid a confrontation with Britain over Syria, agreed to see him. He reminded Lawrence that the French had fought there in the crusades. Yes replied, Lawrence, but the Crusaders had been defeated and the Crusaders had failed.
P.432: Wilson was torn between his wish to act within the letter of the law and his distaste for the Italians. In the end he supported the occupation, which was scheduled for May 15. The whole thing, wrote Henry Wilson, the British military expert is mad and bad. The Orthodox bishop stood ready to bless the soldiers. The blue-and-white flag of Greece flew everywhere. Greek soldiers started firing wildly and when Turkish soldiers stumbled out of the barracks to surrender, the Greeks beat them and prodded them along toward the waterfront with bayonets.
P.437: On June 17three representatives of the Ottoman Turks spoke to a group that included Clemenceau, LLloyd George, Wilson and their foreign ministers, Damad Ferid, the Turkish prime minister an amiable, rich man whose main achievement had been to marry the sultans sister made the Turkeys plea. He threw the blame for Turkeys entry into the war and responsibility for the horrific slaughter of Armenian Christians on his predecessors, and he assured his listeners that his countrys fondest hope was to become a useful member of the League of Nations. He begged them to leave the Ottoman empire intact. The peacemakers agreed that Damads performance was pathetic. Wilson thought he had never seen anything more stupid. Lloyd George found it the best proof of the political incapacity of the Turks.
P.438: In London, someone who knew more about the Ottoman empire than anyone in Paris had been watching all this with alarm and despair. Curzon, who had been left in charge of the Foreign Office in Balfours absence, sent a stream of memoranda and letters warning that it was dangerous to assume that the Turks were finished and folly to delay a comprehensive settlement. Lloyd George paid him as little attention as he did most professional diplomats. Curzon represented so much that he disliked. In the end, though it was Curzon who brought Lloyd George down.
P.442: When the British, followed reluctantly by the |French and Italians, took over the full control of Constantinople on March 16, 1920, in the name of law and order and arrested a number of leading nationalists, Ataturk simply responding by arresting Allied officers within his reach, including the unfortunate Rawlinson, and by calling his own parliament .
P.444: While the Allies discussed Armenia in San Remo, Bolsheviks took its neighboring republic of Azerbaijan. Communist inspired rebellions broke out in Armenia itself. Kurdistan had even less chance than Armenia of finding a protector. The issue had come up only once at theParis Conference, When Lloyd George had first produced his list of possible mandates for the Ottoman territories on January 30, he had forgotten to mention it. When he hastily added Kurdistan to his list, he cheerfully admitted that his geography had beenfaulty. He had thought that it would be covered by Mesopotamia or Armenia, but his advisers had told him he was wrong. Mark Sykes, who had traveled in Kurdish territory before the war, liked them because they were tough and good fighters. The American expert, who had never been there, did not: In some respects the Kurds remind of the North American Indians...Their temper is passionate, resentful, revengeful, intriguing and treacherous. They make good soldiers, but poor leaders. They are avaricious, utterly selfish, shameless beggars and have a great propensity to steal.
P.449: In September 1920, less than a month after the Treaty of Sevres had promised an independent Armenia incorporating part of Turkey, Ataturks forces attacked from the south. Despite their best efforts and the attacks of their tiny air force of three planes, the Armenians were gradually forced back. When Aharonian, the Armenian poet who had spoken for his country in Paris, tried to see Curzon in London, he was brushed off with a letter. What we want to see now is concrete evidence of some constructive and administrative ability at home, instead of purely external policy based on propaganda and mendicancy, wrote Curzon. On November 17, the Armenian government signed an armistice with Turkey, which left only a tiny scrap of country still free, Five days later, a message arrived from President Wilson. Under the Treaty of Sevres he had been asked to draw Armenias boundaries; he decided it should have 42,000 square kilometers of Turkish territory. With nation abandoned by the world and crushed between two enemies, the Armenian prime minister said, Nothing remains for the Armenians to do but choose the lesser of two evils, In December, Armenia became a Soviet republic; the Bolshevik commissar for nationalities, Joseph Stalin, was active in bringing it to heel, The...
P.455: Wilsons end was the saddest. Exhausted by the Peace Conference, he plunged into a wretching and debilitating fight with the Senate over ratification of Treaty of Versailles and more specifically the League of Nations.
(Q) Excerpts from old NAT.GEOGRAPHIC Magazines Turks, Armenians, etc.
P.330: They begin their history with the Garden of Eden, which they claim was in Armenia, basing the claim on the naïve statement that the land is beautiful enough to have included Paradise,and also laughingly asserting that the apples of Armenia were worthy to tempt a most Epicurean Eve. Their first recorded ancestors they find in the book of Genesis.
(R) from PROTESTANT DIPLOMACY AND THE NEAR EAST Joseph L. Grabill, ISBN 0816605750 Univ. of Minnesota Press 1991
P.41 : In exasperation, the American Board in 1885 asked the President use the U.S. Navy to help protect missions in the Empire. Only joint American-British complaints prevented disruption of schools. Fearing an insurrection among Christian minorities, Ottoman leaders became neurotic about American colleges, which had an Armenian clientele. The student body of Anatolia College in 1893 included ninety-four Armenians, twenty-three Greeks and three Turks. Among the teachers Turks claimed there were two members of an Armenian revolutionary organization who had posted at the school treasonable placards printed on a college duplicator.
P.47: The missionaries contribution to violence was insensitivity toward the possible results of their attention to Armenians instead of Turks. Missionaries apparently did not expect that invigoration of the Armenia-Turkish language by a modern bible translation and maintenance of many schools among Armenians would encourage nationalism.
P.58: Forces released in the Western balance of power helped begin hostilities between the Turks and the Armenians and Arabs, and also begin unprecedented trouble for the Protestants. The American Protestants at first were not certain what to do. Their reaction blended many aspects of diversified mission behavior of 1914: evangelistic and ethnocentric zeal (as represented by the slogan Christianize the nations), theological flexibility, active humanitarianism, and readiness to use government aid for Protestant ends.
P.69: The United States consul in Aleppo currently reported over 150.000 refugees in the area, with hundreds dying daily. The consul recommended 150.000 Dollars a month to meet the needs of that locality alone. The Dodhe Relief Committee proceeded to reinforce in the American mind the image of the unspeakable Turk. During the last two weeks of September 1915 headlines which made all Turks look like ogres appeared under nearly every dateline in New York Times papers and periodicals. Mission Board told of Turkish Horrors, 10.000 Christians Drowned in Trabzon. Women seized for Harems.
P.72: At the Bosphorus. Morgenthau, Gates and Peet continued as an Armenophile triumvirate. The three men could transfer funds from the United States but they did not have approval of the Porte to distribute relief goods. Gates worked on Talaat, and the diplomat on Enver. Both Ottomans hesitated because they felt that large outside help would stimulate rebellion. The Young Turks angrily spurned attempts by the Americans to end the death marches or to plead a special dispensation for Protestant Armenians. Only four of some forty board members of the ACASR board were either Jews or Catholics.
P.78: American missionaries, diplomats and consuls distributed aid; mission properties became relief centers. The following individuals served on the local relief committee in Constantinople: Elkus, Lewis Heck (embassy official), Gates (RC president), Peet, Luther R. Fowle (Peets assistant) and Elizabeth Huntington (Dodges daughter and staff member at Robert College). The relief goods went almost entirely to non-Turks. Muslim received about 2% of reliefArmenian and Arab Christians obtained most of the rest. Constantinople was allowed 35%, Tiflis 30%, Beirut 13% and Tehran and Persia 20%. Nestorian and Armenian displaced persons in Persia, wards of the Presbyterians, received most of Tehrans share. Favoritism for Christian minorities did not promote goodwill with Muslims, many of whom were destitute and pitiable.
(U) U.S. RESPONSE to TURKISH NATIONALISM & REFORM
Roger R. Trask. Univ. of Minnesota Press. 1971
Unnamed Christianity; The American Educational Effort
P.149: The Turks were also aware of the role played by the missionaries in developing a hostile American public opinion toward Turkey. If American opinion has been uninformed, misinformed and prejudiced, one observer wrote in 1929, the missionaries are largely to blame. Interpreting history in terms of the advance of Christianity, they have given an inadequate, distorted, and occasionally grotesque picture of Moslems and Islam. The Turks believed that a student educated in a foreign school, especially if religious teaching was allowed, would be dominated by an alien culture. Foreign schools, if unregulated, would be hostile to Turkish nationalism and instruments of foreign political influence. Ambassador Grew expressed the point well: As for the question of religious teaching in the schools, I heard a remark the other day which seems to me is very much in point. Somebody said, referring to our recent Presidential campaign in the United States, it is therefore not the Catholic religion at all that is under attack, but the idea of the Catholic church as a foreign institution. If you alter the word Catholic to Christianyou have in a nutshell the attitude of the Turks toward our American schools in Turkey. It is not religion but cultural nationalism that is the stumbling block.. Christianizing to the Turk means the weaning of Turkish youth away from Turkish nationalism and all that the term implies. Grew later pointed out that the Turks felt character should be formed not through religion but through the training of the mind plus the development of an intense nationalism. A Turkish newspaper complained about unnamed Christianity in American Schools.
P.169: American Christian educators, by remaining in Turkey during the highly nationalistic period in that countrys history, made substantial contributions. Most important, they demonstrated the attitudes and methods necessary for satisfactory relations between Christianity and Islam/
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