30/5/2008 - The Turmoil of a War That Would Not End

Excerpts from the book:A Myth of Terror
Armenian Extremism:Its Causes and Its Historical Context
An Illustrated Expose by Eric Feigl

Turks and Armenians between the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (December, 1918) and the Treaties of Gumru, Moscow, and Kars (October, 1921)

Between 1917 and 1918, the collapse of the Russian Czardom robbed the Western powers of their great Eastern ally, thus giving the Central Powers a little breathing space. Armenian irregulars continued fighting on the eastern Anatolian and Egyptian-Arabian fronts and attacking the Turks, Austrians, and Germans with rhetoric. During this period, the Armenians became a factor to be reckoned with in the battle against the Ottoman Empire, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and Germany, who were all putting up a tough defense.

Now, negotiations were finally held that had a certain real foundation. The concessions made to Czarist Russia in the Sykes-Picot Agreement had served the Czar's interests, not those of the ever-hopeful Armenian extremists (extremist not only in their political methods, but also in their exaggerated expectations).

Communist-Bolshevist Russia would long remain an unknown entity, (No one could have guessed that its politics would differ in absolutely no way from those of the Czars; the Armenians suspected this least of all!) So after the collapse of the Czardom, everything that had been promised to the Czars in the Sykes-Picot Agreement was now promised to the Armenians. It was thus reasonable to expect them to distinguish themselves a little bit more in the fight against the Ottoman Empire!

Lloyd George, in his well-known flowery style, described Armenia as a land "soaked with the blood of innocents". Little did he know that he was telling the truth but that the blood was mostly that of Moslems, who in fact had many more dead to mourn than the "Christian" Armenians. Lloyd George was just as much a hypocrite as Wilson and Clemenceau. They had all picked out a "romantic" victim and then dropped her by the wayside as soon as she ceased to be useful.

When the "peace conference" - which was actually nothing but a dictate-preparation conference - began meeting in Paris in January of 1919, it appeared as if the Armenian extremists' hour had arrived. The Armenians sent two delegations to the "peace conference". One was led by the professional emigrant Boghos Nubar, who had been working towards the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire for many years. The other was from the Republic of Armenia (the existence of which had only been made possible by the Turks after the Treaty of Baku on May 28, 1918).

The two delegations immediately began "auctioning" - outbidding each other in demands for territory and underbidding each other in rational arguments. They were apparently confusing politics with a carpet bazaar, where the important criteria are the pattern, the number of square meters, and the age of the desired item. Their demands became so excessive that even such inveterate carpet-lovers as the Allied rulers lost interest in making a real offer. After all, it did not have to be an Armenian carpet. Those of the Turks were much older, more valuable, and more reliable.

After the Armenian delegation led by Boghos Nubar started things off by demanding an Armenia in eastern Anatolia, the joint delegation (the group led by Avetis Aharonian from the Republic of Armenia had in the meantime merged with Nubar) worked its way up to territorial claims stretching from the Black Sea, with Trabzon as a harbor, all the way to Cilicia.

The Armenian population of this "Greater Armenia" would not even have accounted for a fifth of the total population of the region - and that is based on the figures from 1914! Moreover, even if back then in 1914 the entire Armenian population of the world had gathered in eastern Anatolia, there still would not have been an Armenian majority in the region.

But so what? In the nineteenth century, the various Armenian churches had wrestled over who was the "most Armenian". Later, the Dashnaks and Hunchaks both wanted to carry off the palm in the fight to be the best terrorists. And now, the delegation from the Republic of Armenia and the one from the Armenian diaspora were outbidding each other in the same way. As mentioned above, their "common memorandum" claimed not only the "six vilayets" of Van, Bitlis, Diyarbekir, Karput, Sivas, and Erzurum (in which the Armenians had never in history had a majority), it also laid claim to Trabzon, Karabagh (where virtually no Armenians had ever lived), Sansegur, and large parts of Georgia, as well as Cilicia.

At the same time, the reputation of the Armenians as a nation of peace-loving victims who had been defenselessly and helplessly murdered (or rather exterminated) by the bloodthirsty Ottomans was shaken. The reason: The young, autonomous Armenian Republic could not think of anything better to do than start a whole series of wars of conquest.

The president of the "Armenian National Delegation" sums up, in a letter to French Foreign Minister Stephen Pichon, why the Ottomans, who were fighting on five fronts at the same time and were also confronted with internal Armenian rebellions, had to defend themselves by moving the Armenian population out of the endangered areas:

Monsieur le Ministre,

I have the honor, in the name of the Armenian National Delegation, of submitting to Your Excellency the following declaration, at the same time reminding him:

That the Armenians have been, since the beginning of the war," de facto belligerents, as you yourself have acknowledged, since they have fought alongside the Allies on all fronts, enduring heavy sacrifices and great suffering for the sake of their unshakeable attachment to the cause of the Entente:

In France, through their volunteers, who started joining the Foreign Legion in the first days and covered themselves with glory under the French flag;

In Palestine and Syria, where the Armenian volunteers, recruited by the National Delegation at the request of the government of the Republic itself, made up more than half of the French contingent and played a large role in the victory of General Allenby, as he himself and his French chiefs have officially declared;

In the Caucasus, where, without mentioning the 150,000 Armenians in the Imperial Russian Army, more than 40,000 of their volunteers contributed to the liberation of a portion of the Armenian vilayets, and where, under the command of their leaders, Antranik and Nazerbekoff, they, alone among the peoples of the Caucasus, offered resistance to the Turkish armies, from the beginning of the Bolshevist withdrawal right up to the signing of an armistice."

(The letter bears the date on which it was received in the French Foreign Office - December 3, 1918). In this manner, Boghos Nubar explained that the Armenians had waged constant war with the Ottoman Empire from November 1, 1914 right up to the signing of the Armistice of Mudros on October 30, 1918 and had thus been, in his eyes, "de facto belligerents".

reference; ataa.org