Armenian resistance included military, political, and humanitarian [1] efforts to counter Ottoman forces and mitigate the Armenian genocide during the first World War. Early in World War I, the Ottoman Empire commenced efforts to eradicate Armenian culture and eliminate Armenian life, through acts of killing and death marches into uninhabitable deserts and mountain regions. The result was the homogenisation of the Ottoman Empire and elimination of 90% of the Armenian Ottoman population. [2]
Those efforts were countered by Armenian attempts to mitigate the plight through the establishment of humanitarian networks. Those provided for basic needs like food and hiding places. Several armed uprisings attempted to resist deportation are notable, namely the Defence of Van (1915), in Musa Dag and Urfa. Still, violent resistance was rare and often not effective, [2] compared to the humanitarian network which saved up to 200,000 Armenians from death. [3] Local resistance movements were notably supported by a transnational network of help, namely the ABCFM, US Armenian relief committee and missionaries. [4]
Additionally, military efforts to counter the Ottoman Army were conducted by Armenian forces, such as the Armenian Resistance Forces (called fedayeen/ fedayis) and the Armenian irregular units. Those supported Russian efforts to advance on the Ottoman front in the Caucasus. [5]
Humanitarian resistance refers to illegal conduct to mitigate the effects of deportation and prevent annihilation. Core actors of this resistance were religious and civic leaders, such as church committees, doctors and nurses, local Muslims, and influential Armenian dignitaries and foreign missionaries. Those established a self-help network, which supplied deportees in camps with basic needs, such as food, fuelwood, and financial support through money transfer. [6] This network saved thousands of Armenians from death. [6] At the beginning of the deportations, such efforts were still legal but with increasing tensions, those efforts faced crackdowns in 1915, criminalization and forcing to move into the underground. [6]
From this onwards, the resistance conducted fewer public actions. Refugees were hidden in private homes, community centres, and children in orphanages. [7] Military factories and hospitals under the influence of network members served the purpose of employing Armenians, providing them with a permit to move freely in the city and integrating them successfully into their new environment. This prevented their deportation. [7]
In the private sphere, resistance was present in the tiny moments of life. Family ties in the camps were attempts to create through their traditional functions a sense of normality. This social support system aimed to establish relative safety, cared for orphans, and provided health care under the given circumstances. [6]
Individuals, from the Muslim population, and officers as city authorities resisted orders of deportation and faced removal from their posts. [8]
Information established an important part of the resistance and was essential for survival. Smuggled letters of information about the developments in other camps, abuses of CUP officials on deportees and advice on how to survive in the camps helped Armenians to adapt to the new life realities. [8] The full impact of the genocide was long withheld from the Ottoman and international public. Censorship of foreign embassies impeded international attention and intervention. To circumvent the Ottoman censoring, new modes of expression were employed. Such were quoting of biblical passages and literary works, which enabled a restricted spreading of the knowledge of the genocide in international media and politics. [4] Such information provoked international support systems such as the ABCFM, Armenian Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions and the founding of the US Armenian relive committee, leading to fundraising and enacting international pressure. [4]
The majority of the Armenian population resented military resistance against the genocide and hoped instead for survival through displayed loyalty. Important actors of the Armenian community as the church toned down rebellious actions and emphasised patience instead. [2]
In some cases, military resistance was successful:
Other resistance movements were shattered and had the effect of annihilation of entire villages. [2]
Unsuccessful resistance:
Previous Armenian military resistances against forces of the Ottoman Empire were namely:
The Armenian Resistance Forces (ARF) were established in 1890 out of Armenian volunteers called fedayis [9] and of members of the Armenian national liberation movement. Important members were Murad of Sebastia, and Karekin Pastermadjian. Their main aim was to pose resistance to the Ottoman Forces and to act as the defender of the Armenian nation. [9] The ARF gained major importance during WWI on the Caucasus front, where they joined the Russian Army. Their participation contributed to the defeat of the Ottoman army in January 1916. [9] Primary legions fighting with Russia in the Caucasus were the Armenian volunteer legion, staffed by the Armenian National Bureau (ANB) and through that indirectly through the ARF, dominating the ANB. The number of the fighters reached an estimated amount 5.000. [9]
Armenian resistance has left a symbolic dish. The "Harissa (dish)" (Armenian : Հարիսա): is generally served to commemorate the Musa Dagh resistance. Current practice renamed the dish as "hreesi".
The Armenian genocide was the systematic destruction of the Armenian people and identity in the Ottoman Empire during World War I. Spearheaded by the ruling Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), it was implemented primarily through the mass murder of around one million Armenians during death marches to the Syrian Desert and the forced Islamization of others, primarily women and children.
The Social Democrat Hunchakian Party (SDHP), is the oldest continuously-operating Armenian political party, founded in 1887 by a group of students in Geneva, Switzerland. It was the first socialist party to operate in the Ottoman Empire and in Iran, then known as Persia. Among its founders were Avetis Nazarbekian, Mariam Vardanian, Gevorg Gharadjian, Ruben Khan-Azat, Christopher Ohanian, Gabriel Kafian and Manuel Manuelian. Its original goal was attaining Armenia's independence from the Ottoman Empire during the Armenian national liberation movement.
Andranik Ozanian, commonly known as General Andranik or simply Andranik; 25 February 1865 – 31 August 1927), 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 deportation of Armenian intellectuals is conventionally held to mark the beginning of the Armenian genocide. Leaders of the Armenian community in the Ottoman capital of Constantinople, and later other locations, were arrested and moved to two holding centers near Angora. The order to do so was given by Minister of the Interior Talaat Pasha on 24 April 1915. On that night, the first wave of 235 to 270 Armenian intellectuals of Constantinople were arrested. With the adoption of the Tehcir Law on 29 May 1915, these detainees were later relocated within the Ottoman Empire; most of them were ultimately killed. More than 80 such as Vrtanes Papazian, Aram Andonian, and Komitas survived.
The defense of Van was the armed 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.
The occupation of Western Armenia by the Russian Empire during World War I began in 1915 and was 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.
Garegin or Karekin Pastermadjian, better known by his nom de guerreArmen Garo or Armen Karo was an Armenian activist and politician. Armen Karo was a leading member of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation for more than two decades. He was one of the masterminds of the 1896 occupation of the Ottoman Bank in response to the Hamidian massacres, and of Operation Nemesis, in which several perpetrators of the Armenian genocide were assassinated. Between 1918 and 1920 he served as the first ambassador to the United States from the First Republic of Armenia.
Süleymanlı, also known as Zeitun, Zeytun, Zeytunfimis or Zeytünfimis, is a town in the Kahramanmaraş Province, Turkey.
Fedayi, also known as the Armenian irregular units or Armenian militia, were Armenian civilians who voluntarily left their families to form self-defense units and irregular armed bands in reaction to the mass murder of Armenians and the pillage of Armenian villages by criminals, Turkish and Kurdish gangs, Ottoman forces, and Hamidian guards during the reign of Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II in late 19th and early 20th centuries, known as the Hamidian massacres. Their ultimate goal was always to gain Armenian autonomy (Armenakans) or independence depending on their ideology and the degree of oppression visited on Armenians.
The following is the Timeline of Armenian national movement which is the collection of activities during the Armenian national movement.
The Armenian national movement included social, cultural, but primarily political and military movements that reached their height during World War I and the following years, initially seeking improved status for Armenians in the Ottoman and Russian Empires but eventually attempting to achieve an Armenian state.
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Jesse Benjamin Jackson was a United States consul and an important eyewitness to the Armenian genocide. He served as consul in Aleppo when the city was the junction of many important deportation routes. Jackson concluded that the policies towards the Armenians were "without doubt a carefully planned scheme to thoroughly extinguish the Armenian race." He considered the "wartime anti-Armenian measures" to be a "gigantic plundering scheme as well as a final blow to extinguish the race." By September 15, 1915, Jackson estimated that a million Armenians had been killed and deemed his own survival a "miracle". After the Armenian Genocide, Jackson led a relief effort and was credited with saving the lives of "thousands of Armenians."
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