Chapter 18

From War To War

Extract :

In late 1915 and early 1916, things again went rather better for the Ottomans. The Russians retreated in Anatolia, the British were defeated and forced to surrender in Irak, and the sultan’s forces launched a second attack against the Suez Canal. By the beginning of 1916, after bitter fighting and heavy losses, the British and Australians withdrew from Gallipoli and abandoned the attempt to force the Straits.

But in the long run, the superior power of the Allies prevailed. After the Russian Revolution in 1917, the pressure from the East was relaxed, but the British advance from the south could no longer be halted.

During all these struggles and upheavals, the vast majority of the subjects of the Ottoman Empire, irrespective of their ethnic and religious identities, remained loyal. There were, however, two exceptions, among the Armenians in Anatolia and the Arabs in the Hijaz, in Arabia. Even among  the Armenians in Anatolia and the Arabs, most were peaceful and law-abiding, and their menfolk served in the Sultan's armies. But among nationalist leaders in both groups, there were some who saw the war as an opportunity to throw off Ottoman rule and achieve national independence. Clearly, this could only be accomplished with the help of the European powers which were now the sultan’s enemies. In 1914 the Russians  formed four large Armenian volunteers units, and three more in 1915. These, though primarily raised in Russian Armenia, all included Ottoman Armenians, some of them deserters, some of them well-known public figures. One of these units was commanded by an Armenian former member of the Ottoman Parliament. Armenian guerrilla bands were active in various parts of the country and, in several places, Armenian populations rose in armed rebellion, notably in the eastern Anatolian city of Van and the Cicilian town of Zeytun.

In the spring of 1915, when Armenian rebels had gained control of Van, the British were at the Dardanelles, the Russians attacking in the east, and another British force apparently advancing on Baghdad, the Ottoman government decided on the deportation and relocation of the Armenian population of Anatolia- a practice sadly familiar in the region since biblical times.

Some categories of Armenians, along with their families, were declared exempt from the deportation order : Catholics, Protestants, railway workers, and members of the armed forces. But the great mass of Armenians in Anatolia, extending far beyond the endangered areas and the suspect groups, was included in both the deportation and its deadly consequences.

The deportees suffered appalling hardships. In an embattled empire desperately short of manpower, neither soldiers nor gendarmes were available, and the task of escorting the deportees was entrusted to hastily recruited local posses.

Estimates vary considerably as to the numbers, but there can be no doubt that at least hundreds of thousands of Armenians perished, perhaps more than a million. Many succumbed to hunger, disease and exposure; great numbers were brutally murdered, either by local tribesmen and villagers, through the negligence or with the complicity of their unpaid, unfed, and undisciplined escorts, or by the escorts themselves.

The Ottoman central government seems to have made some effort to curb these excesses. The archives contain telegrams from high Ottoman authorities, concerned with the prevention or punishment of acts of violence against the Armenians. They include records of almost fourteen hundred courts martial at which Ottoman civil and military personnel were tried and sentenced, some of them to death, for offences against the deportees. But these efforts had limited effect, and the situation was certainly worsened by the bitterness accumulated in decades of ethnic and religious strife between the Armenians and their once-peaceful neighbours. Istanbul and Izmir were exempted from the deportation orders, as were most of Ottoman Syria and Irak to which the surviving deportees were consigned.

Extract from the Book : "The Middle East" of Bernard Lewis, Scribner, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.