2718) The Armenian “Genocide”? Facts & Figures, 2007

C O N T E N T S
-Historical Background
-Armenian Rebellion & 1915 Relocation
-Statements & Assessments On Armenian Rebellion & 1915 Relocation
-Hovhannes Katchaznouni
-Boghos Nubar
-Admiral Mark Bristol
-James L. Barton’s letter to Admiral Bristol
-Arnold J. Toynbee
-Guenter Lewy
-Edward J.Erickson
-Justin McCarthy
-Cyrus Hamlin
-German Embassy’s Census
-Armenian National Defence Committee of America Letter
-American Scholars' & Historians' Statement . .

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HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
The so-called "Armenian Question" is generally thought of as having begun in the second half of the nineteenth century. One can easily point to the Russo-Turkish war (1877 -78) and the Congress of Berlin (1878) which concluded the war as marking the emergence of this question as a problem in Europe. In fact, however, one must really go back to Russian activities in the East starting in the 1820's to uncover its origins. Czarist Russia at the time was beginning a major new imperial expansion across Central Asia, in the process overrunning major Turkish Khanates in its push toward the borders of China and the Pacific Ocean. At the same time, Russian imperial ambitions turned southward as the Czars sought to gain control of Ottoman territory to extend their landlocked empire to the Mediterranean and the open seas. As an essential element of this ambition, Russia sought to undermine Ottoman strength from within by stirring the national ambitions of the Sultan's subject Christian peoples, in particular those with whom it shared a common Orthodox religious heritage, the Greeks and the Slavs in the Balkans and the Armenians.

At the same time that Russian agents fanned the fires of the Greek Revolution and stirred the beginnings of Pan-Slavism in Serbia and Bulgaria, others moved into the Caucasus and worked to secure Russian influence over the Catholicos of the Armenian Gregorian Church of Echmiadzin, to which most Ottoman Gregorians had strong emotional attachments. The Russians used the Catholicos' jealousy of the Istanbul Patriarch to gain his support to such an extent that Catholicos Nerses Aratarakes himself led a force of 60,000 Armenians in support of the Russian army that fought Iran in the Caucasus in 1827 -1828, in the process capturing most of Iran's Caucasus possessions, including those areas where the Armenians lived. This new Russian presence along the borders of eastern Anatolia, combined with the support of the Catholicos, enabled them to extend their influence among Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. Russian pressure in Istanbul finally got the Patriarch to add the Catholicos' name to his daily prayers starting in 1844, furthering the latter's ability to influence Ottoman Armenians in Russia's favor in the years that followed. Most Ottoman Armenians were still too content with their lot in the Ottoman lands to be seriously influenced by this Russian propaganda, but those who immigrated to Russian Caucasus to join the Russian effort against Ottoman stability and power. The lands that they abandoned were turned over to Muslim refugees flooding into the Empire from persecution in Russia and Eastern Europe. This led to serious land disputes when many of the Armenian emigrants, or their descendants, unhappy with life in Russia, sought to return to the Ottoman Empire in the 1880's and 1890's.

The Russians were not the only foreign power seeking to exploit the Ottoman Christians for political purposes. England and France sponsored missionary activities that converted many Armenians to Protestantism and Catholicism respectively, leading to the creation of the Armenian Catholic Church in Istanbul in 1830 and the Protestant Church in 1847. However these developments were not directly related to the development of the "Armenian Question", except perhaps as indications of the rising discontent within the Gregorian church which the Russians were seeking to take advantage of in their own way.

On the other hand, the Reform Proclamation of 1856 was of major . .

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Center for Strategic Research – 2007, ANKARA

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