Things are in the habit of going on in this haphazard manner, jolting and creaking along. But within the last decade or two a new spirit has been born, which my reader knows under the name of the Armenian movement. Here at Van, no less than elsewhere, it has been a clumsy birth, as might be expected from its parentage. It springs from the two elements above indicated, and flourishes most in the circumstances described. In its ultimate origin it is at once a product of economical conditions and a reflection of the spirit of the times. It causes the old elements to ferment beyond recognition and to assume the most incongruous shapes.
The phenomenon is most remarkable in the case of the Turks. One may remark, by way of parenthesis, that there does not appear to be any evidence of an actual settlement of Turks in Van or the neighbourhood. Among the Mussulman inhabitants of the town about six families or clans, comprising each on the average some fifty persons, may be classed as of Turkish descent. Of these the most prominent are the Timur Oglu; then the Jamusji Oglu, or sons of the buffalo driver, and the Topchi Oglu, or sons of the artilleryman. From their ranks was formed a kind of oligarchy, which ruled the city in former times, and, as was natural, developed a fine taste for faction and had its counterparts of Guelphs and Ghibellines. The passion for intrigue has survived among them longer than the ability to indulge it in methods of their own choosing. Their power has been much curtailed by the progressive centralisation of all government at Constantinople. But they still maintain their hold upon much of the machinery of the administration, filling the offices which are not under the direct patronage of the imperial authorities, such as the presidencies of the municipality, the administrative council, and the judicial courts. With the exception of these families there are very few real Turks in Van; and in the country districts the Mussulman population are probably for the most part of Kurdish origin. They speak both Turkish and Kurdish. The more peaceable among them, who are accustomed to settled pursuits, disown the name of Kurds and affect that of Osmanli, or Turks of the ruling race. They do not belong to any Kurdish tribe. Their sympathies are on the whole on the side of law and order; and their aversion to the turbulence of the tribal Kurds counteracts and perhaps outweighs their jealousy of their Christian neighbours.
An enlightened Government would seize upon these points of union and forge from them strong links to connect society in defence of common interests against the excesses of the Kurds. Van is situated upon the threshold of the Kurdish mountains, close to the immemorial strongholds of Kurdish chieftains, whence they descend with their motley followers into the plains. No sooner had the centralising tendencies in the Ottoman Empire come near to establishing upon a permanent basis the unquestioned supremacy of Ottoman rule in these remote districts, than the Armenian movement commenced to make itself felt. The truth is that those tendencies were of impure origin. The officials at Constantinople were concerned with nothing less than the extension of good government. But they were clever enough to perceive that such modern inventions, as, for instance, the telegraph, gave them the means of controlling for their own purposes distant territories which in former times had been left more or less to themselves. The telegraph substituted the authority of a clique in the Palace at Constantinople for the rough-and-ready but often honest and, on the whole, well-meaning methods of a Turkish pasha of the old school. It is quite possible that the good old pashas would have brought about the ruin of the country, which, indeed, was in effect ruined long before they appeared on the scene. But things might have gone on longer; their rule could not have cost one quarter the existing misery; and the travelled person would at least have preferred spending his life in their shadow than within reach of the wings of the eagle of Russia and the quills of her bureaucrats.
From one cause or another the whole character of Mussulman government has undergone a marked change within recent years. It is scarcely possible to recognise in the ruling circles of such a city as Van the Turkey of our fathers. Fear and suspicion are written upon every face. These passions are transmitted to the rank and file of their co-religionists; the air is full of rumours of Armenian plots. In the old days there would have been a riot and quite possibly a massacre; and everything would settle down. At present a swarm of spies, under the direction of emissaries from the Palace, keep the old sores open and daily discover new opportunities for inflicting wounds. All the vices of the Russian bureaucracy have been copied by willing disciples in the capital, and sent down to the provinces to serve as a model. One may assert without exaggeration that life is quite intolerable for an inhabitant of this paradise of Van.
The spies smell out a so-called plot and denounce its authors to the Governor, who, poor man, is tired to death with their reports. If he fail to follow it up, he is accused at Constantinople, and runs the risk of losing his post. If he interfere, his action may quite well lead to bloodshed at a time when his efforts at pacification were commencing to bear fruit. I gathered that a certain Vali of Bitlis had discovered a working solution of the difficulty. His principle was to go one better than the informers, and himself to organise a huge plot against himself. When this sedition had been quelled by his soldiers just at the time that suited him best, his zeal would be rewarded by the despatch of a decoration from the Palace, and he would be left in peace for some time.
Of course the power of the Kurds is daily on the increase in such circumstances as these. The Palace leans towards them; their petty leaders are taken to the capital and invested with high orders. The wretched puppet of a Governor does not dare to overawe them, as even his slender resources would well enable him to do. On the other hand, the former docile, cringing spirit of the Armenians has given place to a different temper. Partly they are goaded by the spies into so-called rebellion; and, in part, they have been aroused to a consciousness of their own real miseries by the persecution of the most respected of their clerical leaders and by the spread of education.
The Armenian movement has had the effect of resolving their community at Van into two distinct parties. The one is animated by the spirit of the present Katholikos, His Holiness Mekertich Khrimean. The memory of his noble life, spent so largely among them, outlives his long absence from their midst. The evidence of his work and example is spread over the city, and may readily be recognised in the demeanour of those who have shared his thoughts and aims. His last period of residence in this, his native place, would appear to have come to an end in 1885. At that time he was bishop of Van as well as abbot of Varag. His labours were directed to the education of his countrymen; “educate, educate”—the girls no less than the boys—may be said to have been his watchword. His personal influence and the power of the pulpit, when occupied by such a preacher, were thrown into the endeavour to awake those dormant feelings which few human beings, however much their spirit may have been broken, are entirely without. To realise their manhood, and what they owed to themselves and their race was the constant exhortation which ran through his sermons and penetrated to the inmost selves of his flock. Schools sprang up in abundance beneath the magic of his individuality, and teachers were imbued with that enthusiasm for their high calling without which their profession savours of drudgery and tends to produce a similar impression upon their pupils. But the spirit of truth is too often akin to the spirit of revolution, and there are bonds from without as well as from within. When the scales fell from the eyes of this downtrodden people, the naked ugliness of their lot as helots was revealed. Their native energies were transferred from the domain of money-making to that of social improvement and political emancipation. The craft of their minds, abnormally quickened by the long habit of oblique methods, exchanged the sphere of commerce for that of politics. What wonder if they infused their politics with a character at which your superior European would sometimes frown and more often smile? He has been trained by a long spell of comparatively pure government; while the Armenians have been a subject race for over nine centuries, are honeycombed with the little vices inherent in such a status, and are quite unused and as yet unfit to govern themselves.
So the old Armenian nature underwent and is still experiencing a process of fermentation and change. At the same time it threw off some of the characteristics which had been hitherto among the most pronounced. Rashness and contempt for calculation took the place of the old qualities of servility and time-serving. In the domain of the community these discarded qualities were represented by individuals and by a party. The watchword of this party has been submission to the powers that are, and the solid argument which underlies the counsels of those who inspire it is based upon the apparent hopelessness of resistance and the tragic failures which such resistance has already involved. But the sympathy of the impartial spectator can scarcely be enlisted on their side, even if his judgment incline to their views. They are not the new Armenians, chastened by sorrow and sobered by reflection, but, for the most part, the very dregs of the old. Their leader in Van is the bishop of Lim, commonly known as Bishop Poghos. This prelate has long been resident in the city. His talents have been employed to counteract the influence of the present Katholikos; and he has stood at the head of his opponents. When Khrimean departed from his see he named Bishop Poghos his vekil or deputy, it would seem in the hope of promoting peace. But the inhabitants do not appear to have favoured this solution, and the bishop has not held the office for the last several years. He did me the honour of coming to see me—a man of great bulk of body and in advanced years. His features are of the blunt order characteristic of so many Armenians; and one might doubt whether he could ever have understood the personality of such a man as Khrimean.
Such, perhaps, is not an unfair analysis of society at Van and of the transformation which the principal elements have been undergoing. Several massacres of the Armenians have done less to exasperate them than the importation of Russian methods into their daily life. The place swarms with secret police. Should a Mussulman harbour a grudge against an Armenian, he endeavours to excite the suspicions of one of these agents; the house is entered and searched from roof to cellar. Perhaps some harmless effusion of patriotic sentiment is found in the desk of a son of the house, a student. The poem is seized and the youth thrown into prison. Arms are said to be concealed, and a pistol may be discovered. The whole family is at once rendered suspect. One might multiply these instances almost to any extent; but my object is not to excite resentment against the Turkish authorities, only to show the folly of their procedure. If they would only return to their old traditions and try to govern less, the situation would be immensely improved.
I feel sure that such counsel would be appreciated and even tendered by the Pasha if he were consulted by those from whom he takes his orders. But it would have been in doubtful taste to speak one’s mind out to him, the intercourse between us having been confined to the courtesy of an exchange of visits. Nor was he the man to enter usefully into a discussion of the subject. He had come to Van in the pursuit of his profession of Governor some twenty months ago. A Mussulman Georgian of good family, whose ancestral estates lie in Russian territory, not far from the coast of the Black Sea, he could probably lay better claim to a preference for straight over crooked dealing than to any of the more special qualities of a statesman. The Mohammedans who emigrate from the Russian provinces into the dominions of the Sultan are most often those who are unable to sustain competition with stronger elements, given fuller economical play under Russian rule. The Vali of Van, notwithstanding his name and a certain dignity of presence, could scarcely hope to occupy a position of equal importance in the empire of the Tsar. I found in him a man of little or no education, about fifty years of age. Tall and of large frame, his features were almost handsome, except, perhaps, the mouth. He habitually wore a smile upon his face. There he would sit in his long, bare room from morning until evening, sipping coffee with his visitors and puffing cigarettes. He appeared to encounter all kinds of difficulties in the vicarious management of his property in Russia; but one could not doubt that the comely beard would grow white in the Turkish service, and the groves of Kolchis know him no more.