Armenia, a martyr nation / A historical sketch of the Armenian people from traditional times to the present tragic days

by Mugurdich Chojhauji Gabrielian

The Turkish government has revised the sixty-first article of the Treaty of Berlin, and the other signatory Powers have silently consented to it. The following is the Turkish revision: “The sublime Porte engages to realize without delay such maltreatments, persecutions, oppressions, outrages, cruelties, and murders in the provinces inhabited by the Armenians, and guarantees the security of their enemies, the Kurds, Circassians and the Turks, and will acquit them in case of their being brought to justice, and will assist them in case the Armenians rise against them in self-defense, by force of arms, and will declare the Christians as rebels. It, moreover, undertakes to make known to the civilized and Christian powers from time to time, that Mohammedanism and barbarism go hand in hand.” This is just what Turkey has been doing with the silent consent of the European Powers. Of course, Turkey is the chief criminal in the case and the other Powers have been accessories of her crime. And England’s share of that crime is confessed by the best of England’s sons:

“The only effect of the Anglo-Turkish convention has been to increase the confidence of the sultan that he can do as he pleases in Armenia notwithstanding Article LXI of the Berlin Treaty.

“England, therefore, is responsible in three ways. She destroyed the Russian guarantee exacted by the Treaty of San Stefano. She framed the ‘watching’ clause of the Berlin Treaty, and then, to preclude all possibility of effective pressure upon the Turk, she concludes the Cyprus convention which established an illegal British protectorate over the Asiatic dominions of the Sultan.”[109]

“In the field of Eastern politics generally the conspicuous result has been the failure—the complete, humiliating, and irretrievable failure—of the traditional policy pursued by England of supporting the Turk against Russia. That policy, first attempted by Mr. Pitt, in 1791, against the vehement protests of Mr. Burke[110] but presently abandoned, was warmly espoused by Lord Palmerston. It prompted the Crimean war of 1853, and was embodied in the Treaty of Paris of 1856. It had the lifelong support of Lord Beaconsfield, who by refusing to join Russia, Austria, and Prussia in 1876 in applying pressure to the sultan, brought on the war of 1877. Public opinion in Great Britain, outraged by the Bulgarian massacre, prevented him from giving the armed support of Great Britain to the Turks in that year. But he was able to revert to and enforce that policy in the negotiations of 1878, which substituted the Treaty of Berlin for the Treaty of San Stefano, and it dictated the provisions of the Anglo-Turkish convention.”[111]

The Armenian question is simply this: Whether the Armenians should enjoy the liberty of conscience and of action according to the laws of civilization and Christianity, or whether they should be annihilated by the inveterate enemies of civilization and Christianity, the Turkish rulers. The Armenians brought this question to the decision of the Berlin Congress. The Congress decided that the Armenians must enjoy freedom of conscience and action according to the laws of civilization and Christianity. Turkey, by her representatives, agreed and consented to the decision and promised to have civilized laws, and give freedom to Christianity. But no sooner was the Congress dissolved and the representatives of the nations returned to their respective governments, than the Turkish government took up the work of annihilation of the Christian Armenians. The decision, without any action on the part of the Powers, encouraged the Turk to return to his mire to wallow in.[112] The historian’s sad duty is to describe the beast and his bestial acts, so far as it is permissible, and to point out the sources wherefrom he derives his power.

This work of extermination has been carried on in different ways in certain parts of the country. While in the interior small groups of Armenians have been killed and done away with, in the cities imprisonments, tortures, exiles, assassinations and compulsive conversions to Ismal have been in vogue. The following letter dated June 26, 1891,[113] published in L’Observateur, from its Constantinople correspondent, will show some ways of doing away with the Armenians:

“I have already written you, that in consequence of the late disturbances at Constantinople most of the Armenian prisoners have been banished, in small groups, to various distant places, in order not to attract the attention of the public. Is it possible ever to pen the tortures that these unfortunates are suffering in Turkish prisons? The penal system in Turkey is still in its primitive state, and has undergone no improvement since the time of Sultan Mehmed II (1451-1481). Many prisoners have not been able to stand the tortures inflicted upon them, and the death of one of them, Vartan Calousdian (a young man twenty-six years of age), is a new proof of their atrocities.

“The parents of this young man, hearing of his death in prison, succeeded in securing, through the almighty ‘backshish,’ the remains of their beloved in order to inter him in their family grave. While the attendants of the Church at Galata were washing the body according to the custom of the Armenian Church, they could not withhold their tears, and they were awe-stricken at the sight of numerous wounds which marked the body. The poor young man had many of his ribs broken, the palms of his hands and the bottom of his feet were burned and his breast and back striped with long burns....

“Similar cases occur quite often in Asia Minor, but the local authorities conceal them with the utmost care, and make every effort to keep them from the people. The Armenians have not even the right to emigrate from this barbarous country. I telegraphed to you yesterday that the governor of Trebizond prohibited about one hundred Armenian emigrants from leaving the port on the Massangeric steamer ‘Niger.’”

Without the slightest fear of exaggeration the reader can stretch the compass of his imagination to picture to himself the pitiable condition of those prisoners and their families in Asia Minor and Armenia proper. There was neither press nor the influence of the foreign powers; neither facilities of rapid communication, nor the possible use of the telegraph system which is controlled by the government; nor did any safety exist in the post-office system; letters were often torn open with the pretense of suspicion, where “similar cases occur quite often, but the local authorities concealed them with utmost care.” These unfortunate prisoners were tortured and starved to death in those filthy and infectious jails; their wives were exposed to the assaults and outrages of the enemies of their religion, their daughters were abducted and proselyted by threats, their little ones were crying for bread, but there was none to provide for them. They and their homes and families were completely ruined. Like the lambs on the thousand hills of Armenia, the Christian inhabitants of Western Asia were turned over to the Mohammedan wolves by the European Powers.