Comparison of the American Civil Rights Movement to the Actions of the Armenian Church and Armenian State

The Armenian Church would do well to follow the example of African - Americans. Here are a people stolen from their "ancient" homeland by their own people and sold into slavery beginning in the 1600s. Black slaves sought their freedom from that time. The American Civil War was fought because of the issue of slavery.

It was not until 1955 when the Civil Rights Movement began in Montgomery, Alabama, that real - lasting victory would begin for these peoples. Dr. Martin Luther King headed this Civil Rights Movement. The reason Dr. King and the Civil Rights Movement had success is because it was based on the teachings of Christ and it was nonviolent. Regardless of the violence directed toward him (his home was bombed and many threats made against his life and he was murdered in the end) or his followers, King continually fought for the rights of all African - Americans in peaceful ways that were sometimes interrupted by not so peaceful police officers and white terrorists. Blacks were lynched, black churches were bombed, blacks were murdered; threats and vocal intimidation were commonplace, yet King and his followers waged a relentless campaign of nonviolence for the rights of African-Americans.

All Americans know this story and the success of the Civil Rights Movement that continues in peaceful ways today. Yet, there were Armenian - Americans during this period when African - Americans were using peaceful means in the 1950s and 1960s and until the present day waged their campaigns of terror here in the United States.

At the start of this chapter reference was made to the official Armenian Church web site. This church writes today "The two, nation and church, are so closely meshed that it appears that the phrase `national church` was specifically coined for the Armenians». When any fair - minded individual studies the actions of this state and church, joined as one, it is clear why the two cannot be one. Clearly the church is no voice of conscience in Armenia. The church never speaks out to condemn violence and terrorism but rather it takes an active part in such activities. Until there is a separation of church and state and the church stops its teaching of hate, revenge, and terror there will never be peace in the Near East.

In past years, Christians have made judgments about people based on religion and race. The "Christian" knights on the white horses many of us read about in our youth who rode into the holy land to save the Christian faith from the Muslims did more acts of violence and killed more people than did the Muslims. The true Christian story is not a pretty one.

Around 1800 in what today is the Caucasus, southern Russia, and the Balkans, the majority of people who lived there were Muslim. By 1923 all of this had changed and the Muslims were mostly gone. Between 1820 and 1923 millions of Muslims were driven from their homes and lands. More than 5.5 million died either by being killed in wars or driven from their homes and later dying from starvation or disease.

The story of Christian tragedy and deaths in these regions has been amply publicized in the Christian nations of the world. However, throughout the Christian world, the suffering of the Muslims has seldom been recorded.

When one looks closely at a map of Balkan, Anatolia, and the Caucasus regions of the world, one will discover the states existing there today are made up of fairly homogenous populations. These states were created in modern history because of wars and revolutions. They were created out of what was once a part of the Ottoman Empire. This singularity in ethnicity and religion and homogeneity in population came about because of ethnic cleansing. In simple terms, they were created on the suffering of Muslims.

Even though it is important to know and understand the truth, there is no historical mention in Western textbooks of this colossal Muslim loss. In the United States, for example, the Christian Armenian-American people have mounted campaigns in recent years to get the city, state, and national government to condemn Muslim Turkey for committing what the Armenians claim was “genocide” in 1915 of some 1.5 million of Christian Armenians. In addition, the Armenian-American Christians have successfully lobbied several state education departments to include classes for the children of their states, telling them of this alleged genocide.

After Five Hundred Years of Peaceful Coexistence, Armenian Terrorism Begins

The Ottoman Empire was vast. It stretched from Macedonia and Albania to European and Asian Turkey and then across the Middle East to the fringes of North Africa. The Ottoman government controlled twenty-two separate nationalities. None of those nationalities carries the hate, rage, and revenge attributed toward modern-day Turkey than the Armenians.

Nationalism came to the Ottoman Empire from western Europe. One reason the church was so involved in promoting nationalism within the minority communities in the Ottoman Empire was because the Ottoman government allowed religious freedom. Every religious community was permitted a great deal of autonomy. The Muslims made no special attempts to integrate members of other religions into the Muslim nation. The concept of "forced" conversion of Christians to Islam was almost nonexistent, which is contrary to what some textbooks and lobby groups say.

Christian people have never been told the rest of the story about the Ottomans and their tolerance and respect for other people’s religion. The truth is the Ottoman government gave the people in their empire the freedom to worship as they pleased without interference. Individuals calling themselves "Christians" used this freedom to build an anti-Ottoman nationalist sentiment and attitude among their people.

It was during the nineteenth century that the nationalist movement really began. Many Christians improved their economic condition and wished for political power as well. Such power was not to be within the empire. It was an easy step to argue that the Ottoman Muslims opposed God because they believed differently than Christians. This religious nationalism also made it simple to know just exactly who was the enemy. The religious difference would become the foundation for removal of millions of Muslims from the Balkans, Southern Russia, and the Caucasus, which were considered newly acquired Russian lands, which were taken away from the Muslims during nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The Greeks were the first to begin a revolution in the region by wholesale murder and removal of Muslims. This became the example for others to use in their nationalist uprising within the Ottoman Empire. "The patriotic cry of the revolution, proclaimed by the Greek Archbishop Germanos, was `Peace to the Christians. Respect to the consuls. Death to the Turk" (l).

The revolution expanded and more and more Muslims were massacred or tortured to death. The Greeks sought Russian help but it was not given and the Ottomans soon regained control.

There was also the widespread killing of women and children. There were several towns where the entire Turkish population was gathered together and simply slaughtered. Consider Tripolitza:

For three days the miserable [Turkis] inhabitants were given over to the lust and cruelty of a mob of savages. Neither sex nor age was spared. Women and children were tortured before being put to death. So great was the slaughter that [guerrilla leader] Kolokotrones himself says that, when he entered the town, from the gate of the citadel his horse’s hoofs never touched the ground. His path of triumph was carpeted with corpses. At the end of two days, the wretched remnant of the Muslims were deliberately collected, to the number of some two thousand souls, of every age and sex, but principally women and children, were led out to a ravine in the neighboring mountains, and they were butchered like cattle. (2)

The Greeks saw all Turks as being the cause of not being able to establish an independent Greece from out of the past. The cold-blooded murder of all Muslims was in reality nothing more than political acts shamefully justified by religion. It was estimated that more than twenty-five thousand Turks were killed before the Ottomans regained order. However, this failed Greek revolution would set the stage for future revolutions within the Ottoman Empire. The pattern would always be the same. There would be a clear-cut policy of ridding the region of the Turkish Muslim people so a new national Christian identity could be established. Because it was so easy to determine the difference between religions, this became the basis of the removal.

The Greek religious leaders were in the forefront of the rebellion. Bishops and priests often were leaders. There is doubt the revolution would have ever begun had the people themselves started the revolution. The Greek Orthodox Church dreamed of a Greater Greece to extend all the way to Constantinople [Istanbul] for a rebirth of the Christian Byzantine Empire.

The Armenians, Bulgarians, and Russians would each follow with their own revolts and rebellions. The Ottoman Empire was in a long period of decay, and this is why the opportunity for success was present to these different peoples. In looking back over time, one notices that had the Ottomans not allowed people who lived within their empire to keep their identity, religion, language, and traditions throughout many centuries, the nineteenth-century rebellions might not have taken place at all. It can be said, therefore, that the Ottoman Empire, in a way, became a victim of its own religious respect and tolerance.

The Russian empire began to expand westward in the fourteenth century. By the time of Peter the Great (1689-1725), Muslim influence had been greatly reduced. As the Russians expanded, they did not make the same mistake as the Ottomans. They were not tolerant of a people’s religion in a newly conquered territory that differed from their Christian beliefs. The Russians would clear the new lands they took from Muslims and simply replace them with Armenian Christians brought from elsewhere. This was the eighteenth century beginning of what Armenians would later call their "historic homeland", even though Muslims had occupied those lands for a much longer period of time and lived there longer than the Armenian Christians.

The first sizable group of Muslims to be removed was the Crimean Tartars. These people traced their descent back to Turkic tribes who came to the region between 1000 a.d. and 1300 a.d. during different periods of conquest. By 1774 the Ottomans realized the Russians had taken control of the Crimea and Christians began to be resettled on these lands.

This would be only the start of the Russian removal of Muslims as they expanded westward. Forced expulsion became official Russian policy. If Muslims did not leave on their own free will, military force was used to remove them. These "wars" began in the west with the Greek rebellion of 1821 and the Russian-Ottoman War of 1828-1829. Several wars would follow and it was this Russian removal of Ottoman Muslims that led to many of the problems today.

Each time the Russians moved west, seeking warm-water ports, Muslims were forced from their lands, and if they resisted, they were massacred as a matter of Russian policy. The nineteenth century was a period of terror for Muslims who began the century living in the Balkans, Caucasus, and Anatolia and ended up, after losing a major portion of their population to pogroms and ethnic cleansing, in Anatolia by the twentieth century. There were many massacres and forced removals. Throughout the Christian world the deaths of Greeks, Armenians, and Bulgarians have often been told as they shared the same religion. What hasn’t been told is what happened to the Muslims. Their suffering was much greater than the combined Christian losses.

To properly understand the establishment of the Armenian state, one must understand the region’s history in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This historical account must be told as the point of beginning to truly understand how the terrorist state Armenia was formed. Noted historian and author Justin McCarthy evaluated the situation in these words.

Most of what has been called the history of the Caucasus and eastern Anatolia in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries has in fact been mostly propaganda from the ethnic groups that vied for control of the region. While more than willing to exaggerate the losses of their own groups, the authors of such histories seem to have been unaware those enemy groups suffered losses as well. This has led to a tendency to label battles as massacres and wars as `genocide.` To do otherwise would be to admit that both sides were shooting and both sides died. (3)

There were Armenians cooperating with the Russians as early as the 1700s. Armenian Church officials encouraged and supported a Russian invasion of the Caucasus. In the 1790s the Armenian Church archbishop, Argutinskii-Dolgorukov, made a public proclamation that he hoped the Russians "would free the Armenians from Muslim rule» (4).

As the nineteenth century began, Muslims made up a vast majority of the population of Anatolia, the Balkans, the Caucasus, and southern Russia. By 1923, only Anatolia, eastern Thrace, and a part of southeastern Caucasus remained Muslim. Millions of Muslims had disappeared during a one-hundred-year period.

To have a full understanding of Anatolia, the Caucasus, and the Balkans of the nineteenth century, one must understand and appreciate the circumstances of the Muslims` historic homeland and their eviction from it. This is the foundation upon which Russian imperialism and Armenian nationalism is based.

The sad spin of history is that it has been written omitting the basic fact of Muslim contributions and Muslim losses. Justin McCarthy explains it in these words: "Despite the historical importance of Muslim losses, it is not to be found in textbooks. Textbooks and histories that describe massacres of Bulgarians, Armenians, and Greeks have not mentioned corresponding massacres of Turks.... The history of the Balkans, the Caucasus, and Anatolia has been written without mention of one of its main protagonists, the Muslim population» (5).

History notes that some Armenians supported the Russian army in the early 1700s. From this point in time to today, both the Armenian people and their church supported Russian invasions into the Caucasus. Christian Armenians were the eyes and ears of each Russian military campaign against the Muslim Ottomans.

During each of the Russian-Ottoman wars, the Ottoman Armenians crossed the battle lines on a regular basis to provide military information to the enemy, the Russians. Because of their active assistance of the Russians, thousands of Armenians left Anatolia when the Russians retreated, fearing natural retaliations by Muslims. This practice continued until the Ottomans finally removed all Armenians from eastern Anatolia in 1915 during World War I because of their active help of the invading Russian army.

Armenians established a revolutionary political organization in 1890 with the purpose of overthrowing the Muslim Ottoman government. The Russians supplied the arms and assistance to these Armenian revolutionaries.

The activities of the revolutionaries were greatly facilitated by the relationship to the Armenian Church. As a body, the church naturally crossed the Ottoman-Russian border, because its two centers were in Echmiadzin, in Russian Armenia, and in Istanbul, and clerics, bishops, and ideas freely crossed between the two ecclesiastical jurisdictions. Using the facilities of the church, revolutionary clerics easily kept up communication between revolutionaries in the southern Caucasus and Anatolia and the Russian government. The presence in the Armenian revolutionary movement of priests and bishops brought together the two foci of Armenian identity – the church and modern nationalism. It also gave religious blessing to secular nationalism and presented Armenian nationalism in a religious context easily understood by eastern Anatolian Armenian villagers. Moreover, church officials also gave practical assistance to the revolution. For example, the monastery of Derik, on the Persian side of the Ottoman-Persian border, was organized by it revolutionary abbot (Bagrat Vardapet Tavaklin, or Akki`) into an arsenal and infiltration point for Armenian revolutionaries acting in the Ottoman Empire (6).

The Armenians have long been experienced in building organizations to support their cause of obtaining free lands from someone else. Armenian organization building can be traced back to 1860 when the Benevolent Union was founded in Istanbul to what was titled “Restore Cilicia”.

In 1878 revolutionary organizations were founded. The Black Cross was organized in Van. This group has been compared to the Ku Klux Klan in the United States. In 1881 the Defenders of the Motherland was founded in Erzurum. There is a detailed Russian military account in Chapter Eleven of this book that shows additional proof Armenians were nothing more than terrorists in this region of the Ottoman lands. The Armenian Party was founded as a revolutionary political party.

In 1885 an Armenian Newspaper was founded in France by Migirdich Portakalian, a former school teacher from Van. There would be several foreign Armenian newspapers to follow. In addition, countless numbers of Portakalian’s former students became revolutionaries.

The Revolutionary Hunchak Party was founded by the youth of wealthy Armenian families who had sent their children to Paris, France, to obtain an education. Several of these young people adopted the Marxist theory of government. Six students were responsible for the founding of the organization and also a new foreign-published newspaper. They asked for and received help from the Mekhitarist Monastery in Vienna.

The Official Beginning of Armenian Terrorism

The Hunchak’s call of action or their "manifesto" is found on pages 432-439 URAS book as translated from the text published in London in 1887. (See Uras, Esat, Tarihte Ermeniler Ve Ermeni Meselesi, 1976.) The students published in Armenia their party manifesto in the October-November 1888 issue of their newspaper. It is of interest to note that middle- and upper-class Armenians in both Turkey and Russia did not support the student cause. The Hunchak organization published a series of steps to be taken:

1.  The present order must be removed by a revolution and must be replaced by a new society.

2.  The first goal of the party is to obtain the political and national independence of Turkish Armenia. (Armeniansmade up less than a third of the population.)

3.  The methods to be used to reach this goal are propaganda, provocation, terror, organization, and the peasant and worker movement. The propaganda will consist of explaining to the people the basic reasons and the appropriate time of the revolt against the government. Provocation and terror are necessary to increase the people’s courage. The main methods of provocation will be demonstrations against the government, not paying taxes, not wanting reform, and creating hatred against the aristocratic class. Terror will be the method for protecting the people and obtaining their trust in the Hunchak program. The party’s aim is to use terror against the Ottoman government, but the government will not be the only target. Terror will also be used against dangerous Turks and Armenians working for the government, spies, and informers.

4.  A special branch will be formed to organize these terrorist activities.

5. The party shall include a central committee. Two large revolutionary groups shall be formed by workers and peasants. In addition to these groups, bands of guerrillas shall be formed.

6. The most appropriate time to realize the revolution will be when Turkey is at war.

7. After independence of the Armenia of Turkey, the revolution will be extended to the Armenia of Russia, and Iran, and a Federative Armenia will be established.

This "revolutionary program" adopted the views of Russian revolutionaries. The Armenian students founded their "workers and peasants" Hunchak Party in Geneva in August 1887. This student "revolutionary" party changed its name in 1890 to become the Revolutionary Hunchak Party, as this was the name of their newspaper.

The student leaders established their headquarters in Istanbul and organizers were sent to establish party support in Bafra, Merzifon, Amassya, Tobat, Yozgat, Arapkir, and Trabzon. These young people also expanded their operations into Russia and Iran. The Revolutionary Armenian Federation, or Dashnaksutyun as it is known in Armenia, was formed in Russia in 1890. In the beginning the leaders lived in the city of Tiflis in modern-day Georgia. The official "program" of this group was adopted during a General Congress meeting in 1892. This organization, like the Revolutionary Hunchak Party, also began to publish a newspaper, Droshak.

The official party manifesto stated the organization would form revolutionary groups and stage revolts to achieve its objectives. The basis upon which the revolutionary groups were organized was published in their official manifesto:

1.  To organize fighting bands.

2.  To use every means, by word and deed, to arouse the revolutionary activity and spirit of the people.

3.  To use every means to arm the people.

4.  To organize revolutionary committees and establish strong links between them.

5.  To stimulate fighting and to terrorize the government officials, informers, traitors, usurers, and every kind of exploiter.

6.  To establish communication for the transportation of men and arms.

7.  To expose government establishments to looting and destruction.

(See The Armenian Revolutionary Movement by Louise Nalbandian, 1963, p. 168.)

The Revolutionary Armenian Federation was a terrorist organization from day one. This would be the organization that would take control of Armenia after the end of World War I; they have continued state-sponsored terrorism to the present day.

As pointed out in Chapter One, the Armenian Church has been a sponsor of Armenian terrorism from the start. Consider this: In December 1882, seventy-six Armenians were arrested in Erzurum. Those arrested were members of the Defenders of the Motherland Society.

The Ottoman government convicted forty of the seventy-six defendants; they received prison sentences of five to fifteen years for their terrorist activities. However, most of the defendants were pardoned by the sultan the next year at the request of Patriarch Nerses and Bishop Ormanian. Those remaining in prison were pardoned in 1886.

From the year 1895 onward there was a constant series of terrorists acts instigated by Armenians. The Ottoman government reports that 1,828 Muslim men, women, and children were killed and 1,433 more were wounded; 8,828 non-Muslim men, women, and children were killed and 2,238 were wounded. (See Hazinei Evrak, Carton 302, Number 111, file 6, No. 74.)

In the years after 1895, there were constant Armenian rebellions or attempts at rebellion throughout eastern Anatolia. When World War I began on September 6, 1914, the Ottoman government sent a message to the provinces in Anatola directing officials to keep close watch on Armenian leaders. At this time the Ottomans were at war with Russia.

February 25, 1915, marks the date the Ottoman Supreme Military command sent orders regarding Armenians because many of them in the army were deserting. Other orders state that preparations were being made by Armenians to begin a rebellion. The day before, the ministry of interior directed that the Armenian committee centers be closed, their documents seized, and leaders arrested.

On May 30, 1915, the Ottoman Council of Ministers approved the removal of all Armenians from behind their army battle lines. The order was as follows: "It is absolutely necessary to annihilate and destroy by effective operations this harmful activity which has a bad effect on the war’s operations which are designed for the benefit of protecting the state’s security and existence». Details of the Armenian removal will be discussed in depth in a later chapter. There is no genuine proof the Ottomans desired to do anything but remove this very real threat to their army and this is why the Armenians were removed. It is noted that Armenians have produced fake documents in an attempt to prove otherwise. This is a part of the Armenian "genocide industry" that extorts money from the Christian world. In a report delivered by the ministry of the interior on December 7, 1916, there is a statement that "702,900 Armenians had been relocated and that in 1915, 25 million kurush had been spent for this purpose and until the end of October 1916, 86 million kurush had been spent; and until the end of the year the year 150 million kurush more would be spent» (See Genelkurnay, Vi, KLS361, file 1445, F. 15-22.).

If the Turks had wanted to massacre the Armenians why didn’t they just do it rather than spend 261 million kurush to remove the Armenians? The Ottoman government was in terrible financial condition and didn’t have this money to throw away. It makes no sense for them to spend a fortune to remove the Armenians and then massacre them along the way. Several American and British eyewitnesses actually saw the Armenians leaving the country (more on this in later chapters). Who is to be believed? Armenian terrorists or American and British officials?

The church participation also gave the religious blessing and approval to the armed rebellion. There are numerous examples of the church giving direct aid and assistance to help in an effort to overthrow the Ottoman Muslim government. There are several time periods in the region between 1827 and 1923 when there was inter-communal violence between Christian Armenians and Muslim Ottomans. It is likely the history of incidents are incomplete at best, because Armenian attacks on Muslims are not published. However, when Muslims attacked Armenians, the reports almost always were intensely exaggerated, claiming the Turks were making unprovoked attacks on Christians.

The actual truth is that Armenians attacked Ottomans more often than the Ottomans attacked the Armenians. Both Christians and Muslims knew each side was killing the other in growing numbers as the years passed. They also knew that as the ebb of battle flowed back and forth, the civilians on first one side and then the other would be forced to flee for their lives. They understood, firsthand, when inter-communal war came to them, they would surely be killed.

The animosity that began to grow between Christian Armenians and Muslim Turks started when the Russians began their military conquests into the Caucasus. The Armenians were widely scattered throughout the southern Caucasus and eastern Armenia. In 1800 the Armenians were not a majority population in any region of any size, including the area known as Armenia today. The Armenians realized that without Russian help, they could never create and establish what they would later call their "ancient” homeland. It is interesting that the self-called Armenian "ancient" homeland had far more Muslims living there in 1800 than there were Christian Armenians.

Throughout the 1800s the Russians attempted to move ever westward by military conquest. When they took Muslim Ottoman lands, there were always two results: the forced removal of the Muslims regardless of how many generations they had lived there, and the moving of the Christian Armenians into the vacated Muslim lands to replace the fleeing Muslims.

There was almost one hundred years of warfare between the Russians and the Ottomans that began with the Russo-Turkish war of 1827-1829. In this, and each war to follow, the pattern was always the same. The Russians sent attacking armies into established Ottoman lands. The Armenians, living within this Ottoman territory, always supported the attacking Russians. The Russians acquired lands by force and the large Muslim majority population living there was forced out without compensation. The Russians then gave the Muslim lands to Armenians, who moved in right behind the departed Muslims.

In the 1827-1829 war, there was a massive population exchange between the Muslims and Christians of the Erivan region of the Caucasus. By the time the Russo-Turkish wars of 1855-1856 and 1877-1878, so many Christian Armenians had moved in from the Ottoman Empire they became, for the very first time, a majority population in a land called Armenia today. Thus the so-called "ancient" homeland dates from the mid-1850s.

By 1864 the Russians controlled the Caucasus. It was at this time the Russians began in earnest their program of forced removal of remaining Muslims. It was their objective to establish a Christian land that would be loyal to the Russian church.

"The Russians adopted a system of attack and repression that made it impossible for the Muslims to remain in their homes. Villages were plundered, then destroyed. Cattle and anything else necessary to survival were taken. The Russian method was a classic system of forced migration that would later be repeated again and again in the Caucasus and the Balkans – destroy homes and fields and leave no choice but flight or starvation” (7). The Armenians continue this brutal scheme in their invasion of present-day Azerbaijan.

In 1867, Grifford Palgrave, British consul, rode through the Abhazian region of the Caucasus. He reported: "It is very painful to witness the extinction, as such, of a nation whose only crime was not being Russian» (8).

Once the Russians forced the Muslim Turks out of their homes and off their lands, these poor people faced other enemies – disease and malnutrition. The Christian Russian conquerors gave the departing Muslims no provisions or assistance as they left their "ancient" homelands. It is no wonder so many of these destitute Muslims died before reaching safety within the Ottoman Empire.

When the Ottomans threw the Armenians out of the country for starting a rebellion and killing Turks in 1915, the Armenians cried they were mistreated because no one gave them supplies and provisions. However, when they were given Muslim lands and the Muslims were forced out with no supplies or food, the Armenians did not raise a finger to help them. Quite a double standard.
The Armenian dictatorial political organizations believed that once they helped the Russians defeat the Ottomans, the Russians would allow them to create an independent state within Russia. British Ambassador Layard viewed this situation correctly. He realized the Christian Armenian revolutionaries were deceiving themselves. The ambassador understood that if Russia did defeat the Ottomans, the Russian bear would swallow up the Armenians (9).

Because of this ill-founded belief, there were Christian uprisings and inter-communal battles between Ottoman Armenians and Ottoman Muslims throughout eastern Anatolia during the last twenty years of the nineteenth century. Armenian guerrillas slaughtered the inhabitants of Ottoman villages, and when the Muslims responded, Armenians would be killed in return. There is no way to know how many people died on each side during this civil war. However, the massacre and counter-massacre were sufficient to establish the hatred between Christians and Muslims in the region.

The war that led to the Ottoman government’s removing of all Armenians behind Ottoman battle lines began on November 2, 1914. This was the date Russian troops occupied Ottoman border regions. By the following spring, few Ottoman forces stood in the way of a Russian inland advance.

As the Russians continued their attack on Ottoman lands, Armenian rebels, in a coordinated effort, staged uprisings throughout eastern Anatolia. On April 13, one Armenian band took control of the Ottoman city of Van and massacred almost all its Muslim inhabitants until the Russians arrived on May 31, 1915. On August 4, the Ottomans were able to send enough troops to Van to drive the Russians and Armenians out of the city. Because the Armenians had taken such an active role in the capture and turning over of Van to the Russians, the entire Armenian population followed the Russians when they evacuated and retreated home. The Ottomans found a burned-out city when they entered Van.

The revolt in Van was the only Armenian success. During their other uprisings, they were not able to hold any of the Ottoman cities they attacked, but they surely killed many more Turks. These Armenian acts did significant harm the Ottoman war effort.

Even though the Ottomans were able to drive the Russians and Armenians back, Armenians who continued to live among the Turks in eastern Anatolia kept up their attempts to help the Russians by the use of guerrilla-style hit-and-run raids behind the Ottoman battle lines. This act was the final straw that caused the Ottoman government to order the removal of all Armenians from within their country. Wouldn’t any nation do the same when acting in self-defense?

It can be said that the beginning of World War I was also the beginning of the last phase of the inter-communal war between the Armenians and Turks – such warfare having first begun in the 1820s. All kinds of atrocities had been committed between Armenians and Turks in the Caucasus and eastern Anatolia for one hundred years. During World War I, there was little the Ottoman government could do to end the violence because of the Armenian aggressive behavior.

Historian Justin McCarthy observes that evidence from Muslim survivors of the Armenian attacks indicates a long-term hatred was at work. Brutal rapes and torture were evident everywhere and murder was common. Unlike atrocities against Muslims in Europe in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878 and in the Balkan Wars, attacks by Armenians on the Muslims of the east during World War I seem to have been focused on murder rather than on causing flight.

The Armenian rebels were well organized and equipped with Russian arms and ready to launch their revolution within the Ottoman Empire by March 1915. When the signal was given, Armenians in Van began to shoot at police stations and Muslim homes. The Armenians had secretly brought their weapons into the city and the attack was a total surprise.

Armenians quickly advanced through the city of Van, burning the Muslim section and killing any Muslim captured. The Armenians used the same tactics to attack throughout eastern Anatolia.

These attacks were carried out in the same manner as those carried out by the Christians in the Balkans – kill first the individuals who could organize opposition. Everything Muslim was destroyed. All mosques were burned. The entire Muslim section of each city was burned to the ground. Only a handful of buildings were left standing.

Smaller Muslim villages were also attacked. The Muslims were forced to flee with whatever property they could carry. On the roads out of the villages other Armenians waited to rob, kill, and rape women. Survivors were left to continue their escape from the Christian Armenians without food or adequate clothing. At this time there were few young men in the villages because most had been drafted into the Ottoman army.

The Ottomans were quick to respond. Government officials realized Armenian guerrillas were helpful to the Russians. Local Armenian communities also supported these guerrillas. Because of the well-planned and coordinated attacks throughout eastern Anatolia, the Ottoman government solved their problem of how to deal with a disloyal people. On May 26, 1915, the first orders were issued to begin the removal of all Armenians living within the war zone.

It is clear when reading the orders of the Ottoman government what they intended to do – the peaceful moving and resettlement of Armenians. Armenians "claim" today that there were other secret orders issued to massacre the Armenians. History proves this is an absurd allegation and nothing more than a story told to help Armenians get more money and aid from the Christian people of the world.

In reality, the basic problem was that the Ottoman government was so weak it didn’t have the manpower to move the Armenians. The responsibility of moving and protection of Armenians was left up to local officials who also had the problem of having too few troops and supplies.

Local officials were expected to supervise a huge movement of people while they were in the middle of a guerrilla war with Armenian rebels and also in a shooting war with the Russians. All local officials had been a small number of, what can be called, "regular policemen" under their command.

Local officials had a choice to make. They could send off well-guarded large groups of Armenians and leave their cities and villages unprotected against Armenian guerrillas or retain protection for their loyal citizens who remained. The locals did the common sense thing. They refused to send away their small police force to protect the treasonous and deported Armenians, so that when the guerrilla bands of Armenians did attack later, they would not find defenseless Ottoman cities and villages.

The actual responsibility of protecting the Armenians was that of the Ottoman government. However, the Ottomans had the same problem as the local officials. They had too few soldiers to send to protect the disloyal citizens who had created the problem in the first place. There is no question but that Armenians were disrupting supply lines behind the Ottoman battle lines. Every Ottoman soldier was needed to help stop the advancing Russian army. This transfer of much needed Ottoman troops to protect disloyal Armenians just wasn’t going to happen. The Ottoman government knew full well, based on almost one hundred years of Russian wars, what would take place if they lost the war. The Muslims would be forced out of the country again and there would be no Russian troops to protect them either. It was a war for survival.

The lack of security for the deported, disloyal Armenians opened the door for bad things to happen, similar to what happened to Muslims forced out of their homes over the years by the Russians. There are reported cases of local Ottoman officials stealing from the Armenians. Many local Muslims saw the chance to even old scores and make huge profits in dealing with the property of the Armenians forced to leave. Fair is fair, because Christians had done exactly the same to Muslims when the Russians moved in and forced the Muslims out.

The greatest danger facing the Armenians came from nomadic Kurdish tribes who raided the convoys. The few local policemen sent with each exiting group were not strong enough