It was only two years after the signing of the Treaty of Berlin and England’s contract with Turkey that “the disturbances among the Kurds assumed a more general character in September (1880), when new troubles were reported in the district south of New Bajazid in the Sanjak of Mush, and in other parts of the same region. Incendiary proclamations were addressed to the Armenians by the insurgent chiefs, and the governor-general of Van applied to Constantinople for reinforcements but was answered that none could be spared. On the 20th of September the Kurds had destroyed thirteen Armenian villages.”
The powers who fixed their signatures through their representatives to the treaty of Berlin, “through Mr. Goschen, presented a collective note, on September 7, 1880. It refuted the statement of Abedden Pasha, that the government had already begun the work of reform, and after criticising the projected reforms, declared that they had been inadequate to the object in view and that a much greater development of the principles of decentralization and religious equality, the organization of a better police force, more energetic protection against the Kurds, a more definite provision concerning the functions of Governor-General, could alone satisfy the rights and expectations created by the sixty-first article of the Treaty of Berlin.”[107]
“On October 3, without making the slightest references to censures which had been addressed to it, and even appearing completely to ignore the collective note, the Porte, assuming a haughty tone, merely notified the Powers of what it intended to do.”[108]
From this time on it appears that the Powers thought they had done enough. It is also reported that Prince Bismarck expressed the opinion that there would be “serious inconvenience” in raising the Armenian question and the British Ambassador at Constantinople, Mr. Goschen, in anticipation, wrote to Earl Granville: “If they (the Powers) refuse, or give only lukewarm support, the responsibility will not lie with Her Majesty’s Government.”
Thus the abandonment of the cause of justice by the Powers, thus leaving the Armenians at the pleasure of the Turks, paved the way for successive massacres by the latter under various pretenses.
The Circassians, Kurds, and Turks, have always been at liberty to go about well armed, but no Christian was allowed to carry arms of any kind, not even for self-defense. In case he was found with arms, he was arrested and cast into a dungeon of indescribable torture. If the Armenians would protect themselves against their enemies, they were seized upon by military force as insurgents. Yea, a groundless suspicion was enough for the officers, who entered, by force of arms, into the Armenian Church in Erzroum (1890), desecrated the sacred edifice, disturbed the religious services of the Christians, under the pretext of searching for arms. The indignation of the Christians at the violation of their rights cost the lives of several persons, including that of the Armenian bishop of Erzroum.
Notorious Mousa Bey, a Kurdish chief, after committing numerous robberies and cruelties, murdered an Armenian and abducted his daughter; at Bitlis, he tortured an Armenian to death with red-hot iron. At the head of his brigands he fell upon another Christian family and destroyed the entire family, and ravished the women in the village of Dabovank. Many complaints and a multitude of witnesses of his outrages could hardly effect his being brought to Constantinople to answer for those charges. After all these crimes, the Turkish court of Justice—rather of “Mockery,” as the distinguished statesman, the late Mr. Gladstone, called it—acquitted him.
In the summer of 1890 it looked as if the persecution had reached its climax. The London Daily News sent special correspondents to Armenia, and their reports leave no doubt that for some reason or other the Turkish government have resolved to make the lives of the Armenians unbearable.
“There is a well-founded suspicion that the sultan is deluding himself with the idea that, by supplanting the Christian Armenians by Mohammedan Kurds, he can raise up a formidable barrier to the Russian conquest of the province. The immediate result of his asinine policy is to make the Armenians look to the czar as their only powerful friend, and the feeling of indignation in this country is so strong on the subject that it is probable Lord Salisbury would not dare to interfere should Russian troops enter Armenia.”
“Mampre Benglian, the Armenian bishop of Alashgerd, has arrived at Constantinople by way of Trebizond, under guard as a criminal. The charge against him is that he advised his flock to leave Armenia and seek refuge in Persia. The Bishop was arrested and subjected to the most outrageous indignities, insulted, spat at, and flogged, thrown into a dungeon and there confined for some time before being sent to Constantinople. Owing to the remonstrances by the British and Russian ambassadors, he has been given his freedom on parole. A letter from Alashgerd says: ‘We can neither depart nor stay, and no other course is left us but to perish where we are. The Kurds and Turks openly declare that they mean to kill as many Armenians as they can, and that they have full permission.’ The Kurds have set fire to the crops of the Armenians in many places in the vicinity of Bitlis. The situation in Armenia is daily becoming more deplorable. There has been a wholesale massacre of Christians at Moosh.”