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, namely the Defence of Van, and in Musa Dagh 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 against the genocide
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]
Armenian orphanage in Aleppo, Syria
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]
Individual resistance
In the camps, support systems were established to care for orphans and provide health care.[6] Individuals, from the Muslim population, and officers like city authorities resisted orders of deportation and faced removal from their posts.[8]
Resistance through information gathering
Information was 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]
Military resistance against the genocide
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 emphasized patience instead.[2]
Armenian resistance in Urfa 1915
In some cases, military resistance was successful:
in the village of Adana, which in 1915 circumvented deportation by withdrawing to the mountains of Musa Dagh and withstood the Ottoman forces where they secured the survival of 4,200 villagers.
Other resistance movements were shattered and had the effect of annihilation of entire villages.[2]
Unsuccessful resistance:
The village of Urfa resisted deportation important the ottoman troops in August 1915 and held out 25 days only to be defeated. Most of the population was killed or conducted suicide.[2]
Previous military resistance against the Ottoman forces
Previous Armenian military resistances against forces of the Ottoman Empire were namely:
The Khanasor Expedition on July 25, 1897 (Armenian: Խանասորի Արշաւանքը) refers to the subsequent Armenian militia's response to the aftermaths killings of the Defense of Van.
The Sasun uprising in 1904 was the resistance of the Armenian militia in the Sassoun region.
Armenian Resistance Forces
Murad of Sebastia, 1916
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]
In July 1914, before the World War I, both the Russian and the Turkish governments officially appealed to Armenian organizations (the Armenian National Congress of the Russian Empire and the Armenian National Assembly in the Ottoman Empire) to secure the participation of the Armenians in the military operations against each other. The Ottomans held talks with the Armenian Revolutionary Federation during the Armenian congress at Erzurum. The ARF declared that Armenians should fight for the countries of which they were citizens.[10]
In August 1914, in the mountains of Zeitun deserters resisting the draft were joined by raiders. This drew the attention of the Ottoman Empire and contributed to Ottoman considerations about rebellion in this region.[8]
On March 25, 1915 Armenian deserters in the city of Zeitun, once more resisted the Ottoman army but were defeated.[14]
In April / May, 1915 around 30,000 Armenians in the city of Van, joined by Armenian refugees from surrounding villages, defended themselves during the Defense of Van. While the city withhold the efforts of the ottoman Army, the surrounding villages were massacred. The initial armed resistance lasted for a period of less than a month. In May, the Russian Caucasus Army entered the city of Van and the Ottoman army retreated.[15] After the ambush, estimated 50% of the population surrounding Van had died.[14]
In May 24–26, 1918, during the Battle of Abaran Armenian forces were able to prevent the penetration of Ottoman forces in the region of Bash Abaran. Both parties had serious losses, serious enough to prevent the Ottoman army from advancing deeper into Armenian territory.[17]
Armenian harissa
In September, Murad of Sebastia and his volunteers fought at Battle of Baku, where he died in the fighting.[16]
Art and culture
Armenian resistance has left a symbolic dish. The Harissa (Armenian: Հարիսա) is generally served to commemorate the Musa Dagh resistance. Current practice renamed the dish as "hreesi".
1 2 3 4 5 Suny, Ronald Grigor (2015). A history of the Armenian genocide: They can live in the desert but nowhere else. Princeton: Princeton University Press. p.282. ISBN978-1-4008-6558-1.
↑ Morris, Benny (2019). The thirty-year genocide: Turkey's destruction of its Christian minorities, 1894-1924. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. p.486. ISBN978-0-674-91645-6.
1 2 3 David, Monger (2018). "Networking against Genocide during the First World War: the international network behind the British Parliamentary report on the Armenian Genocide". Journal of Transatlantic Studies. 16 (3): 296.
↑ Mouradian, Khatchig (2021). The Resistance Network, The Armenian Genocide and Humanitarianism in Ottoman Syria, 1915–1918. Michigan State University Press. p.28. ISBN978-1-61186-385-7.
1 2 3 Mouradian, Khatchig (2021). The Resistance Network, The Armenian Genocide and Humanitarianism in Ottoman Syria, 1915–1918. Michigan State University Press. p.28. ISBN978-1-61186-385-7.
1 2 3 4 Gunn, Christopher (2019). "In Search of the "Immortal" Volunteers: The Legacy of Armenian Fedayis on the Caucasus Front, 1914–1916". Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs. 39 (3): 432–455. doi:10.1080/13602004.2019.1654187. S2CID203108292.
↑ Hinterhoff, Eugene (1984). Illustrated Encyclopedia of World War I. Vol.iv. Persia: The Stepping Stone To India. New York: Marshall Cavendish. p.500. ISBN0-86307-181-3.
↑ The Hugh Chisholm, 1920, Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Company ltd., twelve edition p.198.
1 2 Mouradian, Khatchig (2021). The Resistance Network, The Armenian Genocide and Humanitarianism in Ottoman Syria, 1915–1918. Michigan State University Press. p.28. ISBN978-1-61186-385-7.
Kaligian, Dikran (September 2014). "Anatomy of Denial: Manipulating Sources and Manufacturing a Rebellion". Genocide Studies International. 8 (2): 208–223. doi:10.3138/gsi.8.2.06. ISSN2291-1847.
Kurdoghlian, Mihran (1996). Պատմութիւն Հայոց / Hayots Badmoutioun (in Armenian). Athens, Greece: Hradaragutiun Azkayin Oosoomnagan Khorhoortee. pp.92–93.
Morris, Benny; Zeʼevi, Dror (2019). The thirty-year genocide: Turkey's destruction of its Christian minorities, 1894-1924. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. p.486. ISBN978-0-674-91645-6.
Mouradian, Khatchig (2021). The resistance network: the Armenian genocide and humanitarianism in Ottoman Syria, 1915-1918. Texts and studies in Armenian history, society, and culture. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press. p.28. ISBN978-1-61186-385-7.
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.
Andranik Ozanian, commonly known as General Andranik or simply Andranik;, 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 and in Russian Van operation was the armed resistance of the Armenian population of Van and Russian army 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 the 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, historically Zeitun, Zeytun, Zeytunfimis or Zeytünfimis, is a neighbourhood of the municipality and district of Onikişubat, Kahramanmaraş Province, Turkey. Its population is 475 (2022).
Fedayi, also known as the Armenian irregular units, Armenian militia, or Armenian Hayduks 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 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.
The Zeitun rebellion or Second Zeitun Resistance took place in the winter of 1895–1896, during the Hamidian massacres, when the Armenians of Zeitun, fearing the prospect of massacre, took up arms to defend themselves from Ottoman troops.
Ruben Ter Minasian was an Armenian politician and revolutionary of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF) who played an important role in the Armenian national liberation movement and later in the First Republic of Armenia.
Khatchig Mouradian is a journalist and academic who works as a lecturer at Columbia University.
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."
Fred Douglas Shepard was an American physician who witnessed the Armenian Genocide. Due to his relief efforts, Shepard is known to have saved many lives during the genocide. He was especially known for trying to dissuade Turkish politicians from deporting the Armenians.
The Ottoman Empire was one of the Central Powers of World War I, allied with the German Empire, Austria-Hungary, and Bulgaria. It entered the war on 29 October 1914 with a small surprise attack on the Black Sea coast of Russia, which prompted Russia to declare war on 2 November 1914. Ottoman forces fought the Entente in the Balkans and the Middle Eastern theatre of World War I. The Ottoman Empire's defeat in the war in 1918 was crucial in the eventual dissolution of the empire in 1922.
Hasan Tahsin Bey was an Ottoman and later Turkish bureaucrat and politician. Throughout his career as a politician, Tahsin served as a governor to several Ottoman cities including Aydın, Erzurum, Van and the province of Syria. Thereafter, he served as deputy to the cities of Ardahan, Erzurum, and Konya. During the Armenian genocide, he was complicit in the Kemah massacres. After the war, he provided important testimony on the genocide.
During World War I, Germany was a military ally of the Ottoman Empire, which perpetrated the Armenian genocide. Many Germans present in eastern and southern Anatolia witnessed the genocide, but censorship and self-censorship hampered these reports, while German newspapers reported Ottoman denials of the genocide. Approximately 800 officers and 25,000 soldiers of the Imperial German Army were sent to the Middle Eastern theatre of World War I to fight alongside the Ottoman Army, with German commanders serving in the Ottoman high command and general staff. It is known that individual German military advisors signed some of the orders that led to Ottoman deportations of Armenians, a major component of the genocide.
Differing views of what caused the Armenian genocide include explanations focusing on nationalism, religion, and wartime radicalization and continue to be debated among scholars. In the twenty-first century, focus has shifted to multicausal explanations. Most historians agree that the genocide was not premeditated before World War I, but the role of contingency, ideology, and long-term structural factors in causing the genocide continues to be discussed.
During World War I and until 1923, individuals and groups aided Armenians in escaping the Armenian genocide perpetrated by the Young Turk government and later by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. Since the end of the USSR and the independence of Armenia, research has increasingly focused on Ottoman individuals and Western individuals who opposed the genocide during their time. It is generally acknowledged that such individuals or groups may have also assisted the victims of the Assyrian and Greek genocides, which occurred roughly around the same period.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
