Part 2

the whole state of things in Kurdistan might be changed in the course of a twelvemonth by a little firmness and energy on the part of the officials representing the Government. The power of the Kurds for organized resistance has been completely broken, and the military strength of the Government can be no longer contested by them. The change has, even as it is, greatly ameliorated the lot of the Christian and the Jewish population; but to complete the work a sufficient force of mounted native police should be organized and properly paid, and the administration of justice improved.[1]

The success of General Hawker, an officer of the Guards placed by the Turkish Government in command of a well equipped and regularly paid gendarmerie (an appointment which he held until the outbreak of the present European war) has amply verified the correctness of these views.

It is worthy of observation that as a means of “civilizing” the Kurds, and accustoming them to discipline, and at the same time suitably utilizing their warlike propensities as a frontier guard against Cossack raids, Sultan Abdul Hamid formed nearly 10,000 of these Kurds into cavalry regiments, styling them the “Hamidieh Cavalry.” The bravery, hardihood and energy of these men rendered them particularly fit for such an operation, and the experiment proved a complete success. It was largely from time-expired men of these regiments that many of the gendarmes, who proved themselves so efficient under General Hawker’s command, were enlisted.

THE THIRD GROUP, the nomadic Kurds, have largely intermarried with the Arabs of the South, where they winter their flocks and herds, and are therefore really semi-Arab rather than pure Kurd. They are neither so industrious nor so reliable as the Kurds proper, but are quicker witted and more intelligent. During the summer months they graze their flocks on the mountain slopes, and as winter approaches migrate to the warmer regions bordering on Mesopotamia, to return again in the early summer.

It is important to note that the four great mountain strongholds of the Hakkiari, the Dersim, the Zeitun and the Sassun form an exception to the general rule that the plains are populated by a tenacious but unwarlike race of farmers and merchants, largely composed of Armenians, while the mountains are occupied by warlike nomadic and semi-nomadic Kurds. The sturdy warlike agriculturists of these four rough inaccessible regions have never, from the earliest until comparatively recent times, really acknowledged the control of a central government. Originally refugees from persecution, they in their turn offered shelter to lawbreakers and bandits. A large proportion of the Hakkiari are Nestorians, while the Dersimli are Kurds and the Zeitunli and Sassunli Gregorian Armenians. Mr. Geary, who believes the Nestorians to be the descendants of the ancient Chaldeans, says:—“They are unquestionably as fine a people, physically, as are to be found anywhere and their well-shaped heads and expressive features denote great natural intelligence.”

III.

Having thus sketched as briefly as possible the early history, ethnology and physical features of the country, we shall be better able to understand what is commonly known as the “Armenian Question.”

When the Ottoman rule was established, the plain-dwellers and the pastoral tribes of the mountain slopes still preserved their national customs, language and vices, and they have retained these to this day. The waves of conquest had swept over the cold, inhospitable plateau into the richer and warmer plains beyond; but while the conquerors had established governors and garrisons, they had never planted colonists; this is the principal reason why there has been so little change in this strange country. When we hear of the aspirations of the Armenians for independence or absorption by Russia, we must always remember that from all accounts the mountaineers, or Kurds, have been as long established in Kurdistan as the plain-dwellers, usually called by the name of Armenians, and have consequently an equal right to a voice in the matter.

How then is it that the Armenians have developed a national sentiment, whereas the Kurds, who equally retain their former customs and language, are bitterly opposed to any alteration in their present condition?

We all know that Constantinople was captured by the Osmanli Turks in the year 1453. Their sultan, Mahomed II., a liberal and wise ruler, granted religious freedom to the conquered races in his dominions and, in order not to be troubled with their continual disputes, organized all the non-Moslems into communities or “millets” under their own ecclesiastical chiefs, with absolute authority in civil and religious matters. There was already at this time a large number of Armenians in Stambul, who in due course were formed into a community of this kind under their own Ecclesiastikos or Patriach. When Selim I. conquered Armenia the Gregorian Christians of that country were by an imperial iradé incorporated under the Armenian Patriarch at Constantinople, while the Kurds, who had embraced Islam under the Seljuk rule, received no special treatment since they were of the same religion as their rulers.

The formation of the conquered races into separate communities under their own ecclesiastical chiefs, though inspired by the most benevolent principles, has, by fostering centrifrugal aspirations, been the root evil of all the subsequent internal troubles in the Ottoman Empire. Sir Charles Wilson in his article on Armenia, in the “Encyclopædia Britannica” explains how this happened in the case of the Armenians:

This _imperium in imperio_ secured the Armenians a recognised position before the law, the free enjoyment of their religion, the possession of their churches and monasteries, and the right to educate their children and manage their own municipal affairs. It also encouraged the growth of a community life, which eventually gave birth to an intense longing for national life. On the other hand it degraded the priesthood. The priests became political leaders rather than spiritual guides, and sought promotion by bribery and intrigue. Education was neglected and discouraged, servility and treachery were developed, and in less than a century the people had become depraved and degraded to an almost incredible extent. After the issue, in 1839, of the hatt-i-sheriff of gül-Khaneh, the tradesmen and artisans of the capital freed themselves from clerical control. Under regulations, approved by the Sultan in 1862, the patriarch remained the official representative of the community, but all real power passed into the hands of clerical and lay councils elected by a representative assembly of one hundred and forty members. The “Community,” which excluded Roman Catholics and Protestants, was soon called the “Nation,” “domestic” became “national” affairs, and the “representative” the “national assembly.”

But there the process of evolution stopped, for although the national idea became familiar to the Armenian population, there was no real aspiration for a national or separate existence. A well-informed and acute writer, ‘Odysseus,’ in his book “Turkey in Europe” tells us that until the years succeeding the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-1878:

the Turks and Armenians got on excellently together. The Armenians looked upon Russia as their enemy, and a large Armenian population from that country migrated into Kurdistan. The Russians restricted the Armenian Church, schools and language; the Turks on the contrary were perfectly tolerant and liberal as to all such matters.

They did not care how the Armenians prayed, taught and talked, and in many ways found them the most useful and loyal of their Christian subjects. The Greeks were always inclined towards Hellas. But there was no Armenia.

The Armenians were thorough Orientals and appreciated Turkish ideas and habits. While the wealthier members of the community lived in accordance with Turkish custom, the poorer found employment as domestics in Moslem houses. With the exception of those who settled abroad for commercial purposes, the Armenians were quite content to live among the Turks and spend their money in Turkey.

The Armenians even went so far as to speak Turkish among themselves, and their present language contains numerous Turkish words (to the extent of almost forty per cent.), and though Kurds and Zaptiehs perhaps rendered life at times a little too eventful, on the whole the “Sarafs” or money changers gained more than brigands and tax-collectors combined. The balance of wealth certainly remained with the Christians. The Turks Seated them with good humoured confidence and the phrase “millet-i-sadika,” the loyal community, was regularly applied to them.

The toleration of the Government and the friendly relations which existed at that time between the Turks and the Armenians, as described by ‘Odysseus,’ is fully corroborated by the following passages from Mr. Geary’s book “Through Asiatic Turkey”:

The Chief of the Dominican Mission, a very enlightened man who has been for some years resident in Mosul, did not share these misgivings. He did not consider that he ran any risk of losing his life through Mahommedan fanaticism. As for the Government, he said that the religious toleration enjoyed under it was complete. It never in any way interfered with what the Christians did or taught in the schools or the churches. It was impossible to desire more absolute liberty of worship or teaching. But in civil administration there was great scope for improvement, and, indeed, an absolute necessity for it. The laws were good, but they were not steadily applied. The laxity and want of thoroughness which characterised every department were inexplicable and allowed even the best conceived measures _to result in mischief_.... We found the village of Krelani to be one of considerable size: the inhabitants being half Christian and half Mohammedan. Religious differences seemed to be completely disregarded, Christian and Moslem being on the most friendly terms. The chief men of both sections were sitting in a little circle in front of the Kahia’s house when we arrived, and they rose and saluted me very civilly.... I can only say, that if there be any bigotry amongst these people, I saw no manifestation of it throughout my long journey: I could not have been received with greater courtesy if I had been myself a True Believer.... He is a very strict Mussulman, though, like most Turks, whether strict or not, he is very tolerant.

It should be observed that the Armenians as a race are considerably scattered. The original territory known as Armenia having been annexed by Russia, Persia, and Turkey, the bulk of the Armenian population is divided between these three Powers. They are estimated to number in Russia about 1,000,000, in Persia 150,000, and in Turkey, including Salonika and the lost European Provinces, 1,500,000. In addition to these there are about 250,000 Armenians scattered through Europe, America, the East Indies and Egypt. As we shall subsequently see, all the troubles originated from outside and not in Kurdistan itself. The first disturbing element, in the opinion of ‘Odysseus,’ was the arrival of a number of Protestant and other foreign missionaries. This judgment, disappointing as it must be to many who are deeply interested in the religious side of missionary work, is amply corroborated by Sir Edwin Pears, who admits in his book, “Forty Years in Constantinople,” that “In a very real sense it may be said that the fomenters of political agitation in Armenia, as in Bulgaria, were the schoolmasters and the missions, Catholic or Protestant.” These good men, as we are told by Sir Mark Sykes, in his interesting and most important work entitled “Dar-ul-Islam,” soon found that

It was as impossible to turn an Oriental Moslem into a Christian, as it would be to transform an English Christian into a Jew; hence their missionary effort was confined to turning one kind of Christian into some other kind.[2] Large sums of money were spent in transforming a Jacobite into a little Bethel Peculiar Anabaptist, in converting the little Bethel Anabaptist né Jacobite to Roman Catholicism, and in reforming the Roman Catholic late little Bethel Peculiar Anabaptist né Jacobite into an American Keswickian Presbyterian.

But the process of turning a Jacobite into an American Keswickian Presbyterian spoilt a good Oriental and made him a discontented and semi-europeanised Asiatic.

The first Armenian converts to Protestantism were subjected to fierce persecutions by their fellow Armenians who clung to their old form of faith, and for their protection from this persistent annoyance and cruelty the Sultan about 1857 issued an iradé recognizing the Protestants as a separate religious community independent from the Orthodox Armenian Church and free from any interference by its officials.

The second disturbing factor were the clauses inserted, at the request of Russia, in the Berlin Treaty of July 13th, 1878, whereby the six signatory Powers acquired the right of superintendence and interference in the internal affairs of Kurdistan. The clauses of this treaty imbued the Armenians with the idea that they were entitled to the grant of special privileges from the Porte, and this was easily fomented into the notion of founding an Armenian kingdom, or at least an Armenian autonomous state. These ideas were further encouraged by the formation of the Bulgarian Principality and by the foundation in London in the year 1890 of the Anglo-Armenian Society “whose laudable object was hampered by their invincible ignorance of the spirit and methods of the East.”[3]

The third disturbing element was the development, after the Russo-Turkish war, of the Nihilist movement in Russia. The persecuted Armenians of the Caucasus readily entered into the conspiracy, the Armenian branch of which had its headquarters at Tiflis.

The Czar’s Government increased its severity towards the Armenians, and when the Russian police made the existence of the secret societies at Tiflis too precarious, the Armenian revolutionaries moved their headquarters and branches to New York, Paris, London, and Geneva, where, between the years 1889 and 1892, they founded their secret societies the Hintchak, the Aptak and subsequently the most diabolical of them all, the Dashnahsutium. They also founded a regular revolutionary propaganda publishing their own papers and reviews.

These societies, by blackmailing and preying upon the rich Armenian financiers and traders of Europe and America, soon became wealthy corporations. Hunted out of Russia, they sent their emissaries into Kurdistan, where they renewed their nefarious campaign. Although denounced and hated by the respectable resident Armenians and the priests, whom they blackmailed and murdered as occasion offered, they even tried to embroil the central government with the European Powers by committing crimes, the responsibility for which they attempted by false evidence to fix on the Missionary Colleges. They committed murders in the streets of London. In New York the police unearthed a conspiracy of blackmail, bomb outrages and murder, which completely terrorized the rich Armenian bankers and merchants. A little over two years ago the London Press reported the discovery by the New York police of a further conspiracy of terrorism and assassination.

The advent of these revolutionary agents into Kurdistan had the inevitable result of embittering the former good relations of the Turkish Government and the resident Moslem population with the Christian, and especially the Orthodox Armenian section of the inhabitants.

This was natural for the reason that in Turkey the people have a horror of secret societies and plots, founded on the experience of their own suffering at the hands of the Greek Hetairia and the Bulgarian Komitadjis. The fears of the Turks and the Kurds were genuine. They believed that the members of the once loyal “millet-i-sadika” no longer merited that title, and that they were arming and preparing to massacre the Moslems. The whole country became like a powder magazine, and Europe had not long to wait for the inevitable spark which started what are known as the Armenian massacres of 1894 and 1896.

IV.

We shall better understand the question of these massacres, if we first study the Armenian character, at the same time noticing the aptitude and fitness of the race for self-government.

The Pro-Armenian societies in this country would have us believe that the native Armenians are as a race poor, gentle, honest, agricultural folk, persecuted by wicked officials, robbed of their hard-earned savings by the wild Kurds and cruel Circassians, and periodically martyred for their Christian faith; and to give vividness to this pleasant picture one or two europeanized, highly-veneered Armenians are usually produced on our public platforms as living specimens of this “harmless, inoffensive” people. In this manner Lord Bryce, speaking recently at Manchester, pictured the life of mingled simplicity and refinement lived by this Christian race in Moslem Turkey, and went on to say that the Armenians were amongst the most orderly subjects of the Turks, well educated and accustomed to the refinements of civilization as much as ourselves. If this were true it would imply that civilization, as we understand the word, must have made tremendous progress in Kurdistan within recent years under Turkish rule, but this Lord Bryce will probably not admit.

Lord Bryce proceeded to add that for the past sixteen centuries the Armenians had been a Christian people, clinging to their religion in spite of constant persecution, while all the time they might have secured complete immunity from such by renouncing their Christian faith.

It is fair to presume that Lord Bryce struck this anti-Moslem note in order to command sympathy by appealing to the religious prejudices of his audience, for the observation was not only inopportune but entirely unnecessary, in as much as later in the same speech he stated that “there was no fanaticism about the massacres and no outbreak of Moslem fury on the part of the people.”

How utterly false is his estimate of the character of the native Armenian will be shown by the testimony of competent and observant travellers and orientalists, who have studied this people in their own homes. Let us see first what Sir Charles Wilson, the great traveller and Orientalist, author of the article on Armenia in the Encyclopædia Britannica, says:

The Armenians are essentially an Oriental people, preserving like the Jews whom they resemble in their exclusiveness and widespread dispersion, a remarkable tenacity of race and faculty of adaptation to circumstances. They are frugal, sober, industrious and intelligent, and their sturdiness of character has enabled them to preserve their nationality and religion under the sorest trials. They are strongly attached to old manners and customs, but have also a real desire for progress which is full of promise. On the other hand they are greedy of gain, quarrelsome in small matters, self-seeking and wanting in stability, and they are gifted with a tendency to exaggeration and a love of intrigue, which has had an unfortunate influence on their history.

They are deeply separated by religious differences, and their mutual jealousies, their inordinate vanity, their versatility and their cosmopolitan character must always be an obstacle to the realization of the dreams of the nationalists.

LORD SALISBURY, in a letter to Sir Henry Layard, British Ambassador at Constantinople, dated May 30th, 1878, gives expression to the following opinion:

Asiatic Turkey contains a population of many different races and creeds, possessing no capacity for self-government and no aspiration for independence, but owing their tranquillity and whatever prospect of political well-being they possess entirely to the rule of the Sultan.

This letter confirms the contention that at that time there was no real demand for independence.

MR. GRATTAN GEARY, in “Through Asiatic Turkey,” says:

A few of the more educated Armenians hope to secure in some way the autonomy of the country in which they by no means form the majority of the population. Whether they could keep the Mussulman majority of the population in order we need not inquire; granting that a flock of doves could, if well organized and assured of diplomatic support from distant eagles, keep a much larger number of hawks in subjection, the fact remains that even _the Armenians_, by far the most capable and the most numerous of the Christian races in Asiatic Turkey, _have no aspiration for anything further than a provisional autonomy_. They do not regard themselves as the heirs of the Empire, and never in their wildest flights think of superseding the Osmanlis, and themselves welding the Empire together for the common good. _The only race among them all which has any real desire to govern, is the Turkish._ The others either desire, like the Kurds and the Arabs, to be simply freed from the shackles of government altogether, so that they may pillage in peace; or, like the Christians, to be protected from without, or at most to acquire a local predominance. If we want to find an Oriental equivalent for patriotism or love of country, in Asiatic Turkey, we need look for it in the Turkish section of the population alone ...

The autonomy of the Asiatic provinces is out of the question. How could Mesopotamia or Kurdistan become autonomous? The Arabs and the Kurds are too “autonomous” already, and the first thing to be done with them is to place them under a regime of well-armed police. _Asia Minor is Turkish and does not ask for Autonomy._ The elements of self-government do not exist in Armenia. The Armenian Christians are the minority of the population and are deficient in the military virtues; they could not hold their own against the warlike Kurds.

These words of Mr. Geary are the more interesting as they so closely resemble the opinion expressed by Lord Salisbury in his letter quoted above.

‘ODYSSEUS,’ in his “Turkey in Europe,” says:

The characteristics of the Armenians would seem to be somewhat as follows: They are a race with little political aptitude or genius for kingdom building. This want of capacity was not due to the Turkish conquest—even before that event they had proved their inability to hold their own. The Armenians are a people of great commercial and financial talents, supple and flexible as those must be who wish to make others part with their money: stubborn to heroism in preserving certain characteristics, but wanting withal in the more attractive qualities, in an artistic sense, kindliness, and some (though not all) forms of courage.

To this testimony may be added the observations of COL. FRED BURNABY (“On horseback through Asia Minor”):

One thing which seemed to be the unanimous opinion of all classes in Erzeroum was, that should the Armenians ever get the upper hand in Anatolia, their government would be much more corrupt than the actual administration. It was corroborated by the Armenians themselves. The stories which they told me of several of their fellow-countrymen thoroughly bore out the idea.