Sultan Abdul Hamid not only henceforth had a new lease of life for his empire, but by the British illegal protectorate over his Asiatic provinces, he had also her protection against Russia. And while thus protected, he determined to settle his internal affairs, not by doing what he promised, to the European powers collectively and to England separately, to do, namely, to protect his Christian subjects against robberies, oppressions, outrages and murders, but by systematic and gradual extermination of the Armenians in order to rid himself of the Armenian question. Vambery’s description of the character of Sultan Abdul Hamid II may give us some idea how this crafty man would act: “I never met with a man the salient features of whose character were so contradictory, so uneven, and disproportionate, as with Sultan Abdul Hamid. Benevolence and wickedness, generosity and meanness, cowardice and valor, shrewdness and ignorance, moderation and excess, and many other qualities have alternately found expression in his acts and words.”[129] Sultan Abdul Hamid could do like his master of whom Paul wrote to the Corinthians, and said: “No marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light.” (II Cor. 11:14). He was too shrewd to openly inaugurate the work of extermination of the Christians and the persecution of Christianity, but he did it, first underhandedly, until some Armenians, driven to desperation, resorted to self-defense. Of course in the case of a Christian’s self-defense his resentment of the outrages against the oppressor is considered an act of rebellion, and the acts of robbery, outrage, and murder perpetrated by the Mohammedan upon the defenseless Christians are considered meritorious virtues. St. Paul said, “No marvel”; Sultan Abdul Hamid is transformed into an angel of light, what else can we expect? There were, undoubtedly, many Armenians who did revolt against such perversions of truth. Who can always sit still and look like a statue while the wrong-doer is robbing, outraging and murdering his loved ones, and not revolt against such acts, and not give a blow against the wrong-doer, even if we know that he may be cut to pieces for his doing so? This was the kind of rebellion that some Armenians were accused of.
The Turkish government’s accusation of the Armenians with the device of a revolution was simply made up of the tissues of falsehood, and woven by the iniquity of the head of the government, to shroud the just and righteous cause of the Armenian question; to bury it in an ignominious grave of a rebellion that failed. But there was no rebellion, there could be no rebellion. It was, however, convenient for the British government and some other, equally guilty, governments of Europe, to justify their criminal indifference, or self interests, to pretend that it was and that the Armenians were not persecuted for their religion. The Mohammedan government would not say—for she had no regard for the truth—that she was torturing and slaughtering the Armenians because they were Christians. It is perfectly natural for a corrupt and depraved heart to falsify and declare to those, who ask the reason of her murdering the Christians, to say that she is suppressing a revolution. But for any so-called Christian nation and government, like that of England, accepting Hamid’s excuse and explanation, and declaring that to the world was plainly protecting and defending the criminal at the bar of justice and humanity.
The Turkish government knew, so did the European governments, that an Armenian revolution was an impossibility, and such an excuse was an absurdity. The Armenians, who hardly number two millions, scattered among the eighteen millions of the Mohammedans, the latter having a standing army of several hundred thousand soldiers at their command, would indeed have been fools, and the Turks equal fools to be afraid of such a rebellion, and, therefore, had taken such severe measures to suppress it. Such a thing was not only an absurdity but it was also the most wicked thing both on the part of the Turks and on the part of the friends of the Moslems, who pretended to believe it.
About 1892 Sultan Abdul Hamid called the Kurdish chiefs to Constantinople and supplied them with military titles, uniforms, and modern weapons of war, and sent them back to organize their tribes into “Hamidieh” cavalry regiments, which numbered about twenty-two thousand and five hundred men. The Sultan thus “obtained a power eager in time of peace to crush the Armenian growth and spirit.” The Armenians “besought the protection of the co-signatory powers to the Berlin guarantees against the ruthless oppression of the lawless and ruffianly Kurds, and with the tacit consent, if not the approbation of the powers, the Porte now appoints their worst enemies as their guardians.”
A few fragmentary instances may show what these—the government’s—licensed robbers and murderers have done. The following is part of a letter written by an American missionary in the summer of 1892 from Southern Armenia:
“We journeyed east of north over the hills, and dropped down into another valley, in the bosom of which nestled the Armenian village of Khundik, of about twenty houses. It was a charming spot, but the oppression of surrounding Kurdish begs (chiefs) was depleting the population. Their church has been reduced to a heap, and they were not allowed to restore it.”
Dr. ——, a medical missionary, writing of his tour under date of October 20, 1892, stated:
“It was somewhat risky going among the Arabkir villages. Robberies were of almost daily occurrence, and the villagers were in a state of constant alarm at night on account of the raids of the Kurds.... The village of Horesik is in a district of perhaps thirty Armenian villages; but it is one of the most oppressed districts in the empire. A long time ago some Turkish feudal chiefs came from abroad, and gradually gained possession of the whole district. They now claim to own all the land, and even the houses which the people occupy, and which the occupants built, and the gardens and vineyards which they planted.”
It was not the Kurds, and some Turkish feudal chiefs alone, but the officers of the government who carry the sword for the punishment of the evil-doer were also among the worst kind of tormentors and evil-doers themselves.
“October, 1892: At all the villages on the lake (Van) soldiers were stationed to keep boats from landing, on account of cholera.... Then the quartering of the soldiers in the villages. You can imagine what that means for the poor Armenians, you can sympathize with them in the idea that the cure is worse than the disease; that they would much rather take the risk of having the cholera than have the soldiers about. And it is not only the soldiers and underpaid gendarmes that oppress the villagers, extorting the best and making no return. An officer, the captain of one thousand, with seven horsemen, had just been at a village we visited. They and their horses were fed with the best and went off without paying anything.”