Armenian Fairy tales (part 2)

The Young Turks

The Young Turks

The Young Turks (Turkish: Jön Türkler, from French: Les Jeunes Turcs, or Turkish: Genç Türkler) was a Turkish nationalist reform party in the early 20th century, favoring reformation of the absolute monarchy of the Ottoman Empire. Officially known as the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP; Turkish: İttihat ve Terakki Cemiyeti), their leaders led a rebellion against the absolute rule of Sultan Abdulhamid II in the 1908 Young Turk Revolution. With this revolution, the Young Turks helped to establish the Second Constitutional Era in 1908, and the Committee of Union and Progress, based on the ideas of the Young Turks, ruled the Ottoman Empire from 1908 until the end of World War I in November 1918.


The Young Turks came into power by a military coup, the third Ottoman Army stationed at Thessaloniki marched to Istanbul forcing the sultan to resign. The Young Turk Revolution of 1908 reversed the 1878 suspension of the Ottoman parliament, the General Assembly, by Sultan Abdulhamid II, marking the onset of the Second Constitutional Era of the Ottoman Empire. A landmark in the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, the Revolution arose from an unlikely union of reform-minded pluralists, Turkish nationalists, Western-oriented secularists, and indeed anyone who accorded the Sultan political blame for the harried state of the Empire.

Even the Greeks who lived in the Ottoman Empire were happy with Young Turks

The Revolution restored the parliament and the Ottoman constitution of 1876, both of which had been suspended by the Abdulhamid in 1878, effectively ending the short-lived First Constitutional Era. However, the process of supplanting the monarchic institutions with constitutional institutions and electoral policies was neither as simple nor as bloodless as the regime change. The periphery of the Empire continued to splinter under the pressures of local revolutions, including an attempted reactionary Islamist and monarchist countercoup against the Revolution in 1909. This culminated in the 31 March Incident, where the Young Turks defeated the countercoup and regained power, chiefly led by their new political umbrella organization, the Committee of Union and Progress.

The new young Turk Government along with Greek and Armenian representatives

Many Christians were happy and backed the revolution since one of the ideals of the Young Turks was Secularism. Even the Armenian rebels formed with the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP, the political wing of the Young Turks) a government. Every ethnic/religious minority would be freely part of the Ottoman Empire under the Liberal-Nationalist Young Turks who preached secularism and brotherhood.

It is no surprise that the "Young Turk" revolution occurred in the troubled European provinces of the Empire. There the threat to its integrity was the most pronounced, and the need for reforms was most evident. When the revolt broke out, it was supported by intellectuals, the army, and almost all the ethnic minorities of the Empire, and forced Sultan Abdul Hamid II to re-adopt the long defunct Ottoman constitution of 1876, ushering in the Second Constitutional Era. Hopes were raised among the Balkan ethnicities of reforms and autonomy, and elections were held to form a representative, multi-ethnic, Ottoman parliament. However, following the Sultan's attempted counter-coup, the liberal element of the Young Turks was sidelined and the nationalist element became dominant.


The prominent leaders and ideologists included:

Pamphleteers and activists: 

Yusuf Akçura, a Tatar journalist with a secular national ideology, who was against Ottomanism and supported separation of church and state.









Osman Hamdi Bey, Greek painter and owner of the first specialized art school in Istanbul (founded 1883).

He was also an accomplished archaeologist, and is considered as the pioneer of the museum curator's profession in Turkey. He was the founder of Istanbul Archaeology Museums and of İstanbul Academy of Fine Arts (Sanayi-i Nefise Mektebi in Turkish), known today as the Mimar Sinan University of Fine Arts.




Emmanuel Carasso Efendi, a lawyer and a member of the prominent Sephardic Jewish Carasso family.


Emmanuel Carasso or Emanuel Karasu (Salonica, 1862 - Trieste 1934) was a lawyer and a member of the prominent Sephardic Jewish Carasso family of Ottoman Salonica (now Thessaloniki, Greece). He was a prominent member of the Young Turks. The name is also spelled Karaso, Karassu, and Karasso. The form Karasu is a Turkification of his name, meaning literally 'black water'.


Mehmet Cavit Bey, a Dönmeh from Thessalonica, Jewish by ancestry but Muslim by religion since the 17th
century, who was Minister of Finance; he was hanged for treason in 1926.

Mehmet Cavit Bey was an economist, newspaper editor and leading politician during the last period of the Ottoman Empire. A member of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), he was part of the Young Turks and had positions in government after the constitution was established. In the beginning of the Republican period, he was executed for alleged involvement in an assassination attempt against Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.



Abdullah Cevdet, a supporter of biological materialism, who later in his life promoted the Bahá'í Faith.

Abdullah Cevdet was also an Ottoman Turkish intellectual and medical doctor of Kurdish descent. He was also a poet, translator, radical free-thinker, and an ideologist of the Young Turks who led the Westernization movement in the Ottoman Empire from 1908 until 1918 during the Second Constitutional Era.

Cevdet was influenced by Western materialistic philosophies and was against institutionalized religion. He published articles on socio-religious, political, economic, and literary issues in the periodical İçtihat, which he founded in 1904 in Geneva and used to promote his modernist thoughts. He was arrested and expelled from his country several times due to his political activities and lived in Europe, in cities including London and Paris.


Marcel Samuel Raphael Cohen (aka Tekin Alp), born to a Jewish family in Salonica under Ottoman control  (now Thessaloniki, Greece), became one of the founding fathers of Turkish nationalism and an ideologue of
Pan-Turkism.





Agah Efendi, founded the first Turkish newspaper and, as postmaster, brought the postage stamp to the Ottoman Empire.









Ziya Gökalp, a Turkish nationalist (ethnical Kurd) from Diyarbakir, publicist and pioneer sociologist, influenced by modern Western European culture.









Talaat Pasha, whose role before the revolution is not clear.

His career in Ottoman politics began by becoming Deputy for Edirne in 1908, then Minister of the Interior, and finally Grand Vizier (equivalent to Prime Minister) in 1917.[2] He fled the empire with Enver Pasha and Djemal Pasha (the other members of the Three Pashas) in 1918, and was assassinated in Berlin in 1921 by Soghomon Tehlirian, a survivor of the Armenian Genocide/question.





Ahmed Riza, worked to improve the condition of the Ottoman peasantry; he served as agricultural minister, and later as education minister.

He was also critical about the deportations of the Armenians.










Military officers:

Ahmed Niyazi Bey, Ahmed Niyazi Bey (1873–1912), also known as Resneli Niyazi Bey ("Niyazi Bey from Resen"), was the Ottoman bey of the Resne (now Resen, Republic of Macedonia) area in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.[1] An ethnic Albanian,[2][3][4] he was a member of the 1908 Young Turk Revolution. Ahmed Nyazi Bey is also known for the Saraj, a French-style estate he built in Resne.[5]




Enver Pasha, the most famous of all.

After the 1913 Ottoman coup d'état, Enver Pasha became the Minister of War of the Ottoman Empire, forming one-third of the military triumvirate known as the "Three Pashas" (along with Talaat Pasha and Djemal Pasha) that held de facto rule over the Empire from 1913 until the end of the War in 1918. As war minister and de facto Commander-in-Chief (despite only being the de jure Deputy Commander-in-Chief, as the Sultan formally held the title), Enver Pasha was considered to be the most powerful figure of the government of the Ottoman Empire—"the number one man in Constantinople", as many referred to him. At home he was hailed as "the hero of the revolution", Germans were speaking of Turkey as "Enverland", and the British referred to him as "the one whose power was absolute and ambitions were grandiose".

Balkan Wars

The Balkan Wars were two conflicts that took place in the Balkan Peninsula in south-eastern Europe in 1912 and 1913. Four Balkan states defeated the Ottoman Empire in the first war; one of the four, Bulgaria, was defeated in the second war. The Ottoman Empire lost nearly all of its holdings in Europe. Austria-Hungary, although not a combatant, was weakened as a much enlarged Serbia pushed for union of the South Slavic peoples. The war set the stage for the Balkan crisis of 1914 and thus was a "prelude to the First World War."

By the early 20th century, Bulgaria, Greece, Montenegro and Serbia had achieved independence from the Ottoman Empire, but large elements of their ethnic populations remained under Ottoman rule. In 1912, these countries formed the Balkan League. There were three main causes of the First Balkan War. The Ottoman Empire was unable to reform itself, govern satisfactorily, or deal with the rising ethnic nationalism of its diverse peoples. Secondly the Great Powers quarreled amongst themselves and failed to ensure that the Ottomans would carry out the needed reforms. This led the Balkan states to impose their own solution. Most important, the Balkan League had been formed, and its members were confident that it could defeat the Turks.

The Ottoman Empire lost almost all its European territories to the west of the River Maritsa, drawing present day Turkey's western border. A large influx of Turks started to flee into the Ottoman heartland as a result of the lost lands. By 1914, the remaining core region of the Ottoman Empire had experienced a population increase of around 2.5 million because of the flood of immigration from the Balkans.

In Turkey, it is considered a major disaster (Balkan harbi faciası) in the nation's history. The unexpected fall and sudden relinquishing of Turkish-dominated European territories created a psycho-traumatic event amongst the Turks that is said to have triggered the ultimate collapse of the empire itself within five years. Nazım Pasha, the chief of staff of the Ottoman army has been held responsible of the failure and was assassinated in 1913 by Young Turks.

The First Balkan War broke out when the League attacked the Ottoman Empire on 8 October 1912 and was ended seven months later by the Treaty of London. After five centuries, the Ottoman Empire lost virtually all of its possessions in the Balkans.

The Three Pashas

Enver, Talaat and Cemal Pasha in Jerusalem

The "Three Pashas" (also known as the "dictatorial triumvirate") of the Ottoman Empire included the Ottoman minister of war, Ismail Enver (1881–1922); the minister of the interior, Mehmed Talaat (1874–1921); and the minister of the Navy, Ahmed Djemal (1872–1922). They were the dominant political figures in the empire during World War I.

Western scholars hold that after the Coup of 1913, these three men became the de facto rulers of the Ottoman Empire until its dissolution following World War I (Emin, 310; Kayali, 195). They were members of the Committee of Union and Progress (Derogy, 332; Kayali, 195) a party with goals of creating a “Pan-Turkish” state (Allen, 614) which meant, in the words of Enver Pasha, “relocating the dhimmi,” (Joseph, 240; Bedrossyan, 479) the non-Muslim population of the Ottoman Empire.

The Three Pashas were the principal players in the Ottoman-German Alliance and the Ottoman Empire's entry into World War I on the side of the Central Powers. One of the three, Ahmed Djemal, was opposed to an alliance with Germany, and French and Russian diplomacy attempted to keep the Ottoman Empire out of the war; but Germany was agitating for a commitment. Finally, on 29 October, the point of no return was reached when Admiral Wilhelm Souchon took SMS Goeben, SMS Breslau and a squadron of Turkish warships into the Black Sea (see pursuit of Goeben and Breslau) and raided the Russian ports of Odessa, Sevastopol and Theodosia. It was claimed that Ahmed Djemal agreed in early October 1914 to authorize Admiral Souchon to launch a pre-emptive strike.

The First World War

Central Powers vs the Entente

The Ottoman Empire joined the Central Powers in the war, the secret Ottoman–German Alliance having been signed in August 1914. It threatened Russia's Caucasian territories and Britain's communications with India via the Suez Canal.

The Central Powers: Ottoman Empire, German Empire, Bulgaria and Austria Hungary

There were several important Ottoman victories in the early years of the war, such as the Battle of Gallipoli and the Siege of Kut, but there were setbacks as well, such as the disastrous Caucasus

Campaign against the Russians. The United States never declared war against the Ottoman Empire.

April 24th, 1915

The Hanging of the Hunchakian Leaders

April 24th, 1915 is discussed by Armenians as the Armenian Genocide Day. According to Armenians, many of them say the Armenian Genocide started on this date. According to Armenian sources, they say 200 "Armenian intellectuals" were arrested in "Constantinople", according to the "Armenian Genocide" article on Wikipedia. They call it Constantinople even though it was renamed as Istanbul since 1453, I guess it's another low blow for propagandists to keep ancient Christian names on cities that they believe doesn't belong to Muslims.

If you look at other Armenian sites some say 200 Armenian Intellectuals were arrested, some say hanged, some say tried, and then some sites say 250, another one says 239. It's interesting because it seems like no one really knows what happened on April 24, 1915. Although they seem to agree that the Armenian Genocide supposedly started on that date.

So what do Turkish sites say? Every single Turkish site says 2,345 Armenian Rebel leaders were arrested on April 24th, 1915, and many Armenian revolutionary committees were closed down. This is a severe blow to Armenians, because the Ottoman Archives reveal that the Armenians basically lost most of their independence on April 24th, 1915. In fact, this is around the time when the massacres were coming to an end. With Armenian Rebel leaders behind bars it became harder for Armenian Revolutionaries to wage massacres against Ottoman Muslims. Of course, some Armenians know this but they hide this from each other because they know that it would mean that the Armenian Genocide is just a cover-up in order to exploit the current Turkish government (even though they say the Ottomans are guilty, they refer to the Ottomans as the Turkish government) into paying reparations and giving back the lands that Armenians believe were stolen from them thousands of years ago.

Caucasus Campaign

Enver Pasha marched with his newly formed 170.000 men strong army (the 3th Ottoman Army) to invade Russian territory, the campaign failed miserably and the Armenians saw their chance to break free. On May 17th, 1915, the small Ottoman forces made up of Gendarmes (National guard) and policemen defending the city led by Jevdet Bey the governor of Van had been defeated and driven out of the city by the Armenian rebels who fought for a month to take it over. When the Russian army had come to aid them, the Armenians set fire to the Muslim Quarter of Van as a celebration of victory. According to German observer Yohannes Lepsius, the Armenians immediately began to slaughter the remaining Muslim civilians in the city.

Armenian rebels fighting in Van

When the Russians arrived in Van on May 19th, they were horrified to find the streets filled with corpses of Muslims, and with the exception of 2 mosques the entire Muslim part of the city was completely destroyed.

As far as the Ottoman hatred of Armenians as some Armenians believe that such a thing actually existed, we must note that Russian Ambassador Zinovyev reported of Armenians being elected to the Ottoman parliament.

This showed that what happened to the Armenians in World War I was not at all similar to what happened to the Jews in World War II. Here's what he wrote in March 6th 1909, straight from the Russian archives:
Russian Ambassador Zinovyev wrote:

"Two Moslem and an Armenian had just been elected to the Ottoman parliament, and that there had been no sign of hostility between the Moslems and the Armenians. The Turks, and in particular, the Turkish officers have been on very good terms with the Armenians. But the Armenians, who have been instigated against the Turks and the Moslem by their revolutionary associations, do not forge close ties to their Moslem neighbors."

Dr. Stone explains that the theory behind ethnic cleansing that was being conducted by the Armenian rebels, the massacres of Muslims was meant to terrify the local Muslims and send them running away, spreading the news of the horrors and thus allowing more and more Muslims to retreat from those lands, which made it easier for Armenians to settle in and create their own nation and mark larger amounts of territory.

Note that the Armenians were not in the Majority what they actually claim

British Ambassador Phillip Curry reported from Istanbul that the "aim of the Armenian revolutionaries is to stir disturbances, to get the Ottomans to react to violence, and thus get the foreign powers to intervene."

Dr. Justin McCarthy of the University of Louisville, also talks about how the conflict became so intense that both sides forced all the neutral parties to pick a side, and thus the conflict became inevitable.

More Armenian Rebels

Dr. Sina Aksin of Ankara University, talks about the viscous cycle of revenge and violence that occurred as a result of Armenian revolts, which provoked local Muslims to seek revenge against the Armenians, not distinguishing between who is a rebel and who is an innocent Armenian. Thus more people had to choose sides and many innocent people died on both sides. Dr. Aksin tells us that for the Europeans however, the importance was the massacres of the Armenians, and the massacres of Muslims were ignored.

The Deportations

The order to deportation from Talaat Pasha (Tehrir law)

The conditions of exiled and relocated Armenians is a frequent question in the Armenian Genocide debate. Armenian Genocide proponents throw a variety of arguments and claims sourced from questionable survivor stories as to the horrible conditions in which the relocated Armenians suffered during the Tehcir (Relocation) Law in 1915 by the Ottoman Empire. One statement that gets repeated is that the Armenians were relocated in such a way as to deliberately cause their deaths as part of an Armenian Genocide. Through archival documents, reports by foreign consuls, and logical analysis we can determine whether these claims have any merit.

Bitlis

Most scholars acknowledge that the Ottoman government did publish decrees and regulations to protect the "lives and properties of Armenians to be transferred." No one denies the 15 regulations (for the well being of Armenians) published following the Tehcir Law on May 30, 1915. Article 4 of the regulations states that "attention will be paid to establishing the villages in places which suit public health conditions, agriculture and construction." Other articles focus on the careful attention that governors must follow to ensure the survival of all Armenians, such as ensuring resettlement villages are no more than 25 kilometers from railroads, board and lodging that need to be provided to Armenians, allocation of land and providing tools and equipment for Armenian farmers who are relocated.


Some authors note that the regulations were published but that they were usually not carried out. Regardless the intention of the central government is clear in that it cared for the safety of the Armenians as numerous ciphered telegrams not meant for the public were also later revealed to show concern for the Armenians being relocated.

Armenian Refugees from port Said

Instead, Armenian Genocide proponents argue that following these regulations and public decrees for the safety of Armenians there were second sets of more secret orders that compelled local authorities to exterminate Armenians. However, to this day no proof of such orders have been found. Hence, Armenian Genocide proponents argue that the orders may have been destroyed once authorities received them or that the archives of the Ottomans may have been cleaned of such evidence.

Although there may be a fragment of a chance that such "second set" of orders were distributed there is no evidence to support it and accusations and conspiracy theories alone should not be the basis for a conclusion that the government planned an Armenian Genocide.

The Ottoman ciphered and top secret telegrams to governors and other authorities within the Ottoman Empire are valid primary sources because they were not meant for publication. When Armenian Genocide proponents try to discredit them as fabrications or arguing that there were second sets of orders that contradict them simply have no basis in reality. Why would the government send contradicting and conflicting orders believing that the Ottoman archives would never be seen by foreigners.

If one were to be arrested for planning a murder but no evidence of that plan exists because the prosecution argues that the plans were secretly destroyed or hidden then that case would be dismissed immediately. It would explain why no court has ever ruled on the allegation of an Armenian Genocide the Malta Tribunals which were created to punish the Ottoman leaders in the aftermath of World War One for crimes against Armenians was indeed dropped because of the lack of evidence.