During the Balkan war, when even the mosques were crowded with sick and starving refugees and only the most heroic efforts of the Turkish army, decimated with cholera, were able to keep the victorious Bulgars outside the gates of the city whose very foundations were shaking under the vibration of the enemy’s guns, Greeks, Bulgars and foreign adventurers of every description feasting and making merry in the cafés of Pera openly rejoiced at the misfortune of the Turkish Empire. The principal of Robert College, a Christian school on the shores of the Bosphorus, allowed full play to his sectarian bias, boasting that many of the enemy’s successful generals had been educated at the College, which was founded under the protection and goodwill of the Sultan. Yet during those bitter days, in spite of all this provocation, not a single alien enemy was interfered with by those “fanatical Moslems,” whose hierarchial chief, the Sheik-ul-Islam, set an example by continuing to employ the Greek gardener who had been in his service for many years. The Turks were either too tolerant or too contemptuous to even notice the unseemly and licentious behaviour of the enemies within their gates. Such is the character of a people who would rather go without their dinner than see a poor man hungry, and who, even at a period when Jews were being burnt alive in Christian Spain, Huguenots hunted out of France and priests guilty of saying Mass executed in England, allowed perfect freedom to every race and sect within her dominions.
In the present war we have the overwhelming and convincing testimony of all ranks, from Lord Kitchener downwards, that the Turks have fought gallantly and cleanly, and have treated our wounded and prisoners with kindness and humanity. It is inconceivable, therefore, that these same Turks without any provocation (and Lord Bryce himself has said that there was no religious fanaticism), should have committed the devilries of which they are accused, and in this connection we have the curiously illuminating observation by a celebrated correspondent, on his return from the seat of the last Balkan war, that “paradoxical as it might seem, the Turks were the only Christians in the Balkans”!
This brief examination of the Turkish military and political situation, and of Turkish character, ought sufficiently to refute the suggestion that the Turks were the aggressors and acted without provocation.
On the other hand these same military and political factors, when applied to the Armenian point of view and seen in conjunction with the character of these people, afford good and sufficient reasons for believing that the Armenians themselves commenced the troubles by rising in rebellion. It would indeed have been more than extraordinary had the rebellious section, armed and ready for any mischief, remained quiet under circumstances which were so entirely in their favour.
The defeat of the Turkish army in the Caucasus and the absence of the greater part of the local garrisons and gendarmery, as well as of the able-bodied Moslems, at the front, were entirely favourable to the long matured but hitherto abortive schemes of the revolutionists and russophile Armenians for raising an armed rebellion. Bands of armed Armenian volunteers called “Fedais,” estimated by Lord Bryce at over 8,000, with a probable increase “in the near future” to between 20,000 and 25,000, were already operating in the country as early as last March, and Lord Bryce and the “Friends of Armenia” were appealing for funds to clothe and equip the Armenian Volunteers on April 2nd, almost one month before these alleged unprovoked “massacres.” Furthermore Russia was undoubtedly arming the population and assisting in fomenting a revolution; nor can Russia be blamed for this, seeing that she was then at war with Turkey. Finally the character of the Armenians, so graphically described by Sir Mark Sykes in his account of the people of the Mush plain, and by other travellers whom we have quoted, leaves no doubt that the majority of the Armenian population were quite ready and willing to take advantage of the situation.
What really seems to have occurred in this: about the end of April the Armenians of the Van district believing, after the defeat of Sary Kamish in the Caucasus, that the complete victory of Russia was assured, thought that their opportunity had at last arrived. Urged on by the revolutionaries and Russian agents, and hoping to co-operate with the “Fedais” who had already seized the town of Baskale, 50 miles to the East on the main road from Van to the Persian frontier, they rose in revolt and, as a correspondent of the Times, perhaps in an unguarded moment, admits, “finally captured the town of Van and took a bloody vengeance on their enemies.” It was the old story of the massacre of the Zeitun garrison over again. Early in June the revolutionists betrayed the town to the Russian troops.
What happened afterwards is more or less conjecture, but reading the accounts, even those evidently inspired from Armenian sources, it would appear that there were organized risings in other parts of Asia Minor also. For Mr. Henry Wood, the special correspondent at Constantinople of the United Press Agency of America, reported that the Armenians not only were in open revolt but were actually in possession of Van and several other important towns. At Zeitun he said that on the participation of Turkey in the war, when the authorities tried to enforce military service upon the young Armenians (as they were entitled to do by the Constitution), the soldiers were attacked and 300 killed. The town was subsequently retaken, and the population was dispersed and deported. It appears obvious that the Turkish authorities, anxious for the safety of their lines of communication, had no other alternative than to order the removal of their rebellious subjects to some place distant from the seat of hostilities, and their internment there. The enforcement of this absolutely necessary precaution led to further risings on the part of the Armenians. The remaining Moslems were almost defenceless, because the regular garrisons were at the front as well as the greater part of the police and able-bodied men. Already infuriated at the reports of the atrocities committed at Van by the insurgents, in fear for their own lives and those of their relatives, they were at last driven by the cumulative effect of these events into panic and retaliation and, as invariably happens in such cases, the innocent suffered with the guilty.
The Turkish Government has repeatedly been accused of trying to “end the Armenian question by ending the Armenians,” but the evidence of many persons who travelled through the country shortly after the previous disturbances is, that with very rare exceptions only able-bodied men were slain, and not the women, children, or aged. This in itself would confirm the opinion that the measures were purely repressive and, however severe, were taken in the interest of public safety.