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The wartime massacres begin
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After the Ottoman empire's entry into the First
World War on 29 October 1914, fighting between Turkey and Russia
quickly spilled into Eastern Anatolia. After a series of Ottoman
military setbacks, most notably at Sarikamish
(29 December 1914-3 January 1915), the Armenians were accused -
in a few cases justly - of conspiring with the advancing Russian
forces to ensure Turkish defeats. The legend of 'Armenian treachery'
gave the Ottoman government the pretext to sanction measures designed
to remove all traces of the Armenian population from the empire.
Beginning in April 1915, the Ottoman authorities rounded up tens
of thousands of Armenian men and had them shot. Hundreds of thousands
of Armenian women and children were deported. Many Turkish historians
have contended that these actions were a justified, or at least
explicable, response to a serious threat to national security. They
cite in particular the Armenian 'revolt' that began in the city
of Van
on 20 April. In fact, the 'revolt' was a desperate response to the
persecution already underway - by 19 April, 50,000 Armenians had
already been killed in Van province, and tens of thousands were
being deported from neighbouring Erzerum.
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Eyewitness accounts
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Damning eyewitness accounts - ranging from German
missionaries to consular officials from the Vatican, Italy and Greece
- testify to the fact that similarly horrific acts took place throughout
Anatolia during the rest of 1915. In Bitlis,
15,000 Armenians were murdered during an eight-day period in June.
A month later, rampaging Turkish troops massacred most of the 17,000
Armenians in Trebizond
on the Black Sea.
The fate of those who avoided the mass killings was little better.
An estimated 400,000 deportees did not survive the march south towards
Syria and Mesopotamia. Armenian refugees flooded into Russia and
the Mediterranean ports, where starvation and disease claimed further
lives. An exact death toll is unknown, but Western historians now
estimate that at least one million Armenians - and possibly many
more - perished in this attempted genocide.
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Fund-raising for the Near East
Transcript
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News of Armenia's plight
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Despite the half-hearted protests of its diplomats in Constantinople,
Erzerum and Aleppo, the German government made no serious attempt
to curb Turkish excesses. Armenia's plight received far greater
publicity in the neutral United States, with its small but active
Armenian diaspora, and in the Allied countries.
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Armenian refugees:
Lord Mayor's Fund (120k)
Transcript
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Russia, France and Britain issued a joint statement on 24 May 1915
condemning the Armenian massacres. Books and pamphlets such as Arnold
Toynbee's Armenian Atrocities: The murder of a nation
detailed the methods and scale of Turkish crimes against a small
and defenceless 'Christian' people. Organisations such as the Armenian
Refugees (Lord Mayor's) Fund were set up to provide financial
aid to those who had survived massacre and deportation.
As Lord
Bryce conceded in a letter to Asquith
on 28 August 1915, more substantial financial support was urgently
required. However, no Allied government wanted to divert precious
resources into the hands of either the Armenian refugees or the
Armenian soldiers who fought the Turks in the Caucasus for the remainder
of the war. Armenia thus remained vulnerable to its two powerful
neighbours, Russia and Turkey.
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Gone and forgotten
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Even after the declaration
of Armenian independence on 28 May 1918, Ottoman troops continued
to kill with impunity thousands of Armenian civilians. The 'free and
independent' Armenian state that was guaranteed by the Treaty
of Sèvres (10 August 1920) lasted less than a year. In
March 1921, Bolshevik Russia and the new Turkish republic signed the
Treaty
of Moscow, creating a new Turkish-Soviet border in the Caucasus
and placing the Armenians once more under foreign rule. Barely a murmur
of protest was raised in the international community. The Treaty
of Lausanne, the revised post-war settlement signed by the Allies
and Turkey in July 1923, made no reference to Armenia at all. |
Aid for victims of
the Armenian massacres
Transcript
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Further research
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The following references give an idea of the sources
held by The National Archives on the subject of this chapter.
These documents can be seen on site at The National Archives.
Reference |
Document |
FO 96/212: |
Various material
on Armenia including Toynbee's book and illustrated
anti-Armenian German propaganda booklets, 1915. |
FO 115/1852: |
Various material
from British embassy in Washington on Armenian atrocities,
1915. |
FO 195/2460: |
Various material
from British consul at Erzerum on impact of war
in Armenia, 1914. |
MT 23/436: |
Ministry of Transport
refusal to allow British transport ship, The
Suffolk, to be used to transport Armenian refugees
from Antioch, Sep 1915. |
T 172/239: |
Letter from Foreign
Office to Treasury, requesting - unsuccessfully,
on Lord Bryce's recommendation - £40,000 from
British government to support Armenian refugees
in Tiflis, Sep 1915. |
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