Background
The Balkan wars had created an opportunity for the revival of new plans to improve the conditions of the Ottoman Armenians. The French, British and Italians were anxious to limit German influence in the Ottoman Empire, while the Russian government encouraged the Catholicos of Armenia to appeal through the viceroy of the Caucasus to the Ottoman government for intervention in favor of reforms in Armenian-inhabited vilayets. This project was prepared by André Mandelstam, the dragoman at the Russian Embassy in Istanbul, and representatives from the Armenian national assembly. It was introduced and discussed in Constantinople at a meeting of the ambassadors of France, Britain and Italy.
The project suggested the formation of a single province from six vilayets (Erzurum, Van, Bitlis, Diyarbakır, Kharput and Sivas) under either an Ottoman Christian or a European governor general. The governor general was to be appointed by the Powers for the ensuing five years. Germany opposed the project and succeeded in obtaining significant modifications, including splitting the region into two provinces. [4]
The Armenian Genocide was the systematic mass murder and ethnic cleansing of ethnic Armenians from Anatolia and adjoining regions by the Ottoman government during World War I.
Erzurum is a city in eastern Anatolia, Turkey. It is the largest city in and capital of Erzurum Province. It is situated 1900 meters (6233 feet) above sea level. Erzurum had a population of 361,235 in the 2000 census, increasing to 367,250 by 2010. The city's population consists mostly of ethnic Turks, with a Kurdish minority based on the south side.
The Hamidian massacres, also referred to as the Armenian Massacres of 1894–1896 were massacres of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire that took place in the mid-1890s. It was estimated casualties ranged from 80,000 to 300,000, resulting in 50,000 orphaned children. The massacres are named after Sultan Abdul Hamid II, who, in his efforts to maintain the imperial domain of the collapsing Ottoman Empire, reasserted Pan-Islamism as a state ideology. Although the massacres were aimed mainly at the Armenians, they turned into indiscriminate anti-Christian pogroms in some cases, such as the Diyarbekir massacre, where, at least according to one contemporary source, up to 25,000 Assyrians were also killed.
The dissolution of the Ottoman Empire (1908–1922) began with the Second Constitutional Era with the Young Turk Revolution. It restored the Ottoman constitution of 1876 and brought in multi-party politics with a two stage electoral system under the Ottoman parliament. The constitution offered hope by freeing the empire's citizens to modernize the state's institutions and dissolve inter-communal tensions.
The First Republic of Armenia, officially known at the time of its existence as the Republic of Armenia, was the first modern Armenian state since the loss of Armenian statehood in the Middle Ages.
Western Armenia, located in Western Asia, is a term used to refer to eastern parts of Turkey that were part of the historical homeland of the Armenians. Western Armenia, also referred to as Byzantine Armenia, emerged following the division of Greater Armenia between the Byzantine Empire and Sassanid Persia in 387 AD.
The Vilayet of Erzerum was a first-level administrative division (vilayet) of the Ottoman Empire.
The Vilayet of Van was a first-level administrative division (vilayet) of the Ottoman Empire. At the beginning of the 20th century, it reportedly had a population of about 400,000 and an area of 15,000 square miles (39,000 km2). Van Vilayet was one of the six Armenian vilayets and held, prior to World War I, many Armenians, as well as Assyrian and Azeri minorities.
The Turkish–Armenian war known in Turkey as the Eastern Operation or Eastern Front of the Turkish War of Independence, refers to a conflict in the autumn of 1920 between the First Republic of Armenia and the Turkish nationalists, following the signing of the Treaty of Sèvres. After the signing of the treaty, an army of the Turkish National Movement under Kâzım Karabekir invaded and defeated Armenia, also recapturing territory which the Ottoman Empire had lost to the Russian Empire in 1878.
Andranik Ozanian, commonly known as General Andranik or simply Andranik; 25 February 1865 – 31 August 1927), 1866 is also engraved on his grave in the Père Lachaise Cemetery. Some sources also erroneously indicate 1928 as his date of death, perhaps because Andranik's body was moved to France and reburied there in 1928.</ref> was an Armenian military commander and statesman, the best known fedayi and a key figure of the Armenian national liberation movement. From the late 19th century to the early 20th century, he was one of the main Armenian leaders of military efforts for the independence of Armenia.
The Defense of Van was the resistance of the Armenian population of Van against the Ottoman Empire's attempts to massacre the Ottoman Armenian population of the Van Vilayet in the 1915 Armenian Genocide. Several contemporaneous observers and later historians have concluded that the Ottoman government deliberately instigated an armed Armenian resistance in the city and then used this insurgency as the main pretext to justify beginning the deportation and slaughter of Armenians throughout the empire. Witness reports agree that the Armenian posture at Van was defensive and an act of resistance to massacre. The self-defense action is frequently cited in Armenian Genocide denial literature; it has become "the alpha and omega of the plea of ‘military necessity’" to excuse the genocide and portray the persecution of Armenians as justified.
Wilsonian Armenia refers to the boundary configuration of the First Republic of Armenia in the Treaty of Sèvres, as drawn by U.S. President Woodrow Wilson's Department of State. The Treaty of Sèvres was a peace treaty that had been drafted and signed between the Western Allied Powers and the defeated government of the Ottoman Empire in August 1920. The proposed boundaries incorporated the Ottoman vilayets of Erzurum, Bitlis, and Van, which once had Armenian populations of varying sizes. This region was extended to the north, up to the west side of Trabzon to provide the First Republic of Armenia with an outlet to the Black Sea at the port of Trabzon. The proposed state of Pontus was discussed at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, but the Greek government of Eleftherios Venizelos feared the precarious position of such a state and so it was included instead in the larger proposed state of Wilsonian Armenia.
The occupation of Western Armenia by the Russian Empire during World War I began in 1915 formally ended by the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. It was sometimes referred to as the Republic of Van by Armenians. Aram Manukian of Armenian Revolutionary Federation was the de facto head until July 1915. It was briefly referred to as "Free Vaspurakan". After a setback beginning in August 1915, it was re-established in June 1916. The region was allocated to Russia by the Allies in April 1916 under the Sazonov–Paléologue Agreement.
The Armenian national awakening resembles that of other non-Turkish ethnic groups during the rise of nationalism under the Ottoman Empire in development of ideas of nationalism, salvation and independence in Armenia, as the Ottoman Empire tried to cover the social needs by creating the Tanzimat era, the development of Ottomanism and First Constitutional Era. However, the coexistence of the communities under Ottomanism proved to be a dysfunctional solution as did the Second Constitutional Era which also ignited the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire.
Erzurum Congress was an assembly of Turkish Revolutionaries held from 23 July to 4 August 1919 in the city of Erzurum, in eastern Turkey, in accordance with the previously issued Amasya Circular. The congress united delegates from six eastern provinces (vilayets) of the Ottoman Empire, many parts of which were under Allied occupation at the time. The congress played a fundamental role in shaping the national identity of modern Turkey.
The Armenian national liberation movement aimed at the establishment of an Armenian state. It included social, cultural, but primarily political and military movements that reached their height during World War I and the following years.
The Armenian Question was the debate following the Congress of Berlin in 1878 as to how the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire should be treated. The term became commonplace among diplomatic circles and in the popular press. In specific terms, the Armenian question refers to the protection and the freedoms of Armenians from their neighboring communities. The "Armenian Question" explains the 40 years of Armenian-Ottoman history in the context of English, German, and Russian politics between 1877–1914. The term "Armenian Question" is also often used to refer to the question of Turkey's lack of acknowledgement of the events surrounding the Armenian Genocide (1915–1923).
Armenians in the Ottoman Empire mostly belonged to either the Armenian Apostolic Church or the Armenian Catholic Church. They were part of the Armenian millet until the Tanzimat reforms in the nineteenth century equalized all Ottoman citizens before the law.
The Armenian congress at Erzurum, held from the end of July to August 2, 1914, was a watershed event where representatives of the ruling Committee of Union and Progress party requested the Armenian Revolutionary Federation to incite a rebellion of Russian Armenians against the Tsarist regime in order to facilitate the conquest of Transcaucasia in the event of the opening up of a Caucasus front.
The Six vilayets or Six provinces or the Six Armenian vilayets were the Armenian-populated vilayets (provinces) of the Ottoman Empire:
