The blackest page in modern history: Events in Armenia in 1915 / the facts and the responsibilities

by Herbert Adams Gibbons

But the Turkish Ambassador in Washington declares that these stories are “fabrications,” and that “no women and children have been killed.”

CHAPTER II

The Armenians, as a Race, have never been, and are not, a Menace to the Security of Turkey. They are Blameless of the Charge of Disloyalty, which has been the Excuse for their Massacre and Deportation.

IN commenting upon the report of the American Committee, on Armenian Atrocities, Djelal Munif bey, the Turkish Consul-General in New York, declared: “However much to be deplored may be these harrowing events in the last analysis, we can but say the Armenians have only themselves to blame.” Djelal Munif bey went on to explain that the Armenians had been planning a revolution, and were killed by the Turkish soldiers only after they had been caught “red-handed with arms in their hands, resisting lawful authority.”

This has been the invariable explanation for the massacre of Armenians in Turkey. We heard it in 1895-1896 and in 1909. We have been hearing it again in 1915. But facts to substantiate it have never been given. On the other hand, there exists overwhelming evidence of the most convincing character to show how inadmissible it is as an explanation, how baseless it is as a charge.

I have talked personally with, or have seen letters and reports from, American missionaries and consular officials of all nations, who were witnesses of the massacres of 1895 and 1896. At that time, as a result of unendurable persecution and injustice, certain organizations of young men, of the type the French call exaltés, banded together in secret societies, an imitation of internal organizations in Russia, agitated, within the Ottoman Empire and abroad, for a more favourable treatment of Armenians and other Christians. Some of these exaltés certainly advocated, and tried to work for, the independence of Armenia. But the propaganda never gained favour in ecclesiastical circles, nor ground among the great mass of the Armenian population in Turkey. Except in the vilayet of Van, the Armenians no longer formed the majority of the population. They were too scattered throughout the empire to have serious hope of winning independence, such as the Greeks, Bulgarians, Servians, and Rumanians had succeeded in obtaining in the Balkan peninsula.[1]

In the 1909 massacre, I was on the ground at the time, and studied these charges. I demonstrated to my own satisfaction (and to that of a number of newspaper men, including Germans) the total lack of foundation of this charge against the Armenians of Cilicia. Not one Armenian out of a hundred had anything to do with the revolutionary societies. The lower classes were too ignorant to be affected by such a propaganda. The Armenian Church denounced the folly of the visionaries. College professors spoke and wrote against it. The wealthy city classes frankly let the agitators know that they were not only passively, but also actively, opposed to the propaganda.

The Turks had nothing whatever to fear from Armenian revolutionaries. They knew this. More than that, they knew just who the exaltés were. The Turkish Government was well able to assure itself that the propagandists were not to be feared. If they had feared them, they could easily have laid their hands on them any time they wanted to. In Adana, the arrest of from thirty to forty young men would have gathered into the net all the agitators. Instead of that, six thousand were massacred there, and half the city burned. Then the Armenian revolution was trumped up as an excuse!

The hideous miscarriage of justice of the court martial after the Adana massacre was the beginning of the downfall of the Young Turk régime. It was a demonstration of the mockery of the Young Turk assertion that the Ottoman Empire was to be reconstructed on the principles of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity. From that day to this, their every act has given the lie to their profession. I say hideous miscarriage of justice, because no element in the empire had welcomed more heartily the advent of the constitutional régime, no element had supported the Young Turks more loyally than the Armenians. If they erred at all during those first nine months of the constitutional era, it was in showing so openly—and so joyously—their touching faith in the men of Salonika. They accepted the revolution as sincere. Their support of the new régime was spontaneous and enthusiastic. They believed in the Young Turks—until they were undeceived by the Young Turks themselves.

After the massacre had stopped, on word from Constantinople, I heard a Young Turk officer address the survivors in the courtyard of the American Mission at Tarsus. He assured them that the danger was over, that it had been due to the counter-revolution of Abdul Hamid, and that now they might feel assured that Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity were really theirs. He told the Armenians that the Young Turks had suffered equally with them, and that they had been companions in misfortune. With sublime faith, sublime even though stupid, the bulk of the Armenians believed once more. They accepted the explanation of the massacre, and continued to support the Ottoman Government.