A Deportation That Did Not Occur

Earlier arguments employ models that resemble older studies of the Holocaust. These studies claim that the Armenian Genocide was decided long before World War I. The war simply afforded the ruling regime an “opportunity” to commit the crime. This interpretation stands somewhat at odds with the thesis that in March 1915, leaders of the ruling Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) held a conference in Constantinople during which they decided to deport the Ottoman Armenians and ultimately commit genocide.

Interestingly, claims that the German ally had suggested the deportations stand in contradiction to these assumptions. The apparent contradiction would have been by and large resolved if assertions that the CUP had coordinated its March 1915 decision with the German ally were true. However, this claim is based on a misrepresentation of a key source and is thereby untenable.(1) Other authors argue that the CUP decided on the Armenian Genocide several months later. In other words, the war was not the long awaited “opportunity” to commit genocide but an unforeseen disaster that created the environment for the decision and execution of the genocide.(2)

A relatively new addition to the debate is the issue of Ottoman population policies. Recent scholarship on the Armenian Genocide suggests that the crime has to be studied within the context of general Ottoman policies. The policies addressed competing claims to sovereignty primarily over Ottoman border areas. These claims were based on the presence of large non-Muslim and non-Turkish populations. Such potential threats to Ottoman territorial integrity could have been effectively overcome if it were possible to ethnically homogenize the whole empire or at least important strategic areas. Key Ottoman documentation on the Armenian Genocide shows that while deporting Armenians was a crucial government goal, using available resources taken from the deportees for settling Muslim refugees or immigrants was equally relevant. Thus, the Armenian Genocide was not simply a program of eliminating Armenian population concentrations; it was a campaign to replace Armenians with Muslim settlers who were considered to be reliable.(3) But when exactly did demographic planning become a dominant consideration for the Ottoman government?

The Ottoman Armenians were not the only non-Muslims that lived in strategically sensitive locations. Greeks, Zionists, and Syrian Christians inhabited similarly important districts. The Ministry of Interior coordinated the demographic policies and, most importantly, the deportations. Thus, the ministry’s files provide some insight into how these groups were targeted. Not surprisingly, at times the same officials who had dealt with other non-Muslim groups played a crucial role during the Armenian Genocide. Thus, the evolving population policy can be partly reconstructed, but some caution appears to be in place. Fundamental differences in the treatment of Armenians and other groups suggest that the government had singled out the Armenians for particularly cruel repression leading to large-scale annihilation. The Nestorian case is a good example for such considerations.

The Ottoman Nestorian communities inhabited the Central Kurdish Taurus Mountains, today largely identical with the Turkish province of Hakkari and the Iraqi Amadiya district. They lived in remote valleys and earned their livelihood through subsistence agriculture and sheep and goat breeding. The isolated region facilitated their efforts to maintain a comparably large degree of autonomy from government interference in communal affairs. Throughout 1914, the Ministry of Interior grew increasingly worried about Russian interest in local matters in the region. Agha Petros, a former Ottoman Nestorian agent, had gone over to the Russians and was promoting Russian interests in the mountains.(4) In June 1914, some Nestorians had approached Russian representatives in Iran and requested arms in return for Nestorian military support.(5) The Ottomans were aware of these contacts. On June 16, 1914, the Ministry of Interior warned the authorities at Van, Mosul, and Erzerum about the activities of a Russian officer who was working together with Agha Petros. Both men were active in the central Kurdish Taurus, one as a member of and the other as an interpreter for the international commission for the demarcation of the Iranian-Ottoman border. The men were allegedly working among the Kurds and Nestorians against the Ottoman government. The authorities were advised to take counter-measures and obstruct their activities.(6)

The situation deteriorated rapidly after the start of the war in Europe in August 1914. Now, the Ottoman authorities began displacing Nestorian villages in the Bashkale region. Brutalities against Nestorians triggered revenge attacks on Muslim villages across the border in Iran. The result was a wave of displacements affecting Christian and Muslims villages on both sides of the border. Christians were forced to leave for Iran, while Kurds were expelled to Ottoman territory.(7) But worse was to come.

Taner Akcam observed that military objectives were, among others, one reason for the deportations. An example was “the forced emigrations of Nestorians and Assyrians from the Van region at the end of 1914.” Stating that, for “example, in September 1914, from the areas closest to Iran, ‘the Nestorians who were ripe for provocation from outside’ were settled into Ankara and Konya. In order to prevent them from creating a community in their new locations, they were settled in Muslim-dominated areas with strict orders that their settlements must not exceed twenty residences in number.”(8) In other words, the security concerns that had led to what was believed to be preemptive attacks on Nestorian villages along the Iranian border had turned into the full-scale deportation of a community.

David Gaunt studied the episode in more detail and gives the right date for the deportation decision, namely, Oct. 26, 1914, and not September 1914. Clearly, the decision has to be seen in close connection with the pending Ottoman attack on Russia that occurred on Oct. 29, 1914. Having provided a correct context, Gaunt argues that the “Ottoman government was disturbed by doubts about Nestorians’ loyalty and was concerned over the possibility that more of them would move into Iran and join the self-defense units established by the Russians.” Therefore, the Nestorians were deported to central Asia Minor. Gaunt rightly stresses that the plan intended the assimilation of the Nestorians and thereby the destruction of their culture.(9) Three days later, another document showed that the order had been extended to the Nestorians living in and around the district of present-day Hakkari city. However, the provincial authorities had advised the government that they lacked the necessary forces to execute the order. In response, the central government was forced to postpone the deportations. Instead, it ordered the close surveillance of the Nestorians until the latter could be deported.(10) By Nov. 5, 1914, the anticipated Nestorian unrest had not materialized. Thus, Talat postponed the deportations until a time when military necessity would render the measure imperative. Until that time, the government deemed it sufficient to keep the situation under surveillance.(11) In other words, the deportation did not take place. The plan had been an ad-hoc security measure. It was shelved once it became clear to the Ottoman central authorities that their worst fear had been unfounded. In 1915, however, the persecution of Nestorians took more brutal forms during the Ottoman retreat from Iran when Nestorians were massacred alongside Kurdish suspects.

The episode demonstrates that by 1914, deportation was again a potential tool for repressive policies. Such deportations would be limited in scale. However, military concerns were paramount and the re-direction of front line troops was not acceptable. Therefore, the Nestorian deportation plan was postponed and not taken up again. During the Armenian Genocide, deportation was a primary policy object that justified the deployment of resources that could have been used for front-line or other service. While documentation from Ottoman archival sources is still limited and incomplete, a careful review of the available evidence is indispensable. Otherwise, authors run the danger of creating trajectories of events that are incorrect.

EndNotes

1) Taner Akcam, A Shameful Act. The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility, translated by Paul Bessemer (New York, N.Y.: Metropolitan Books, 2006), p.152. The author incorrectly summarized Halil Mentese’s memoirs in this instance.

2) The Great Game of Genocide. Imperialism, Nationalism, and the Destruction of the Ottoman Armenians (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).

3) Hilmar Kaiser, “Armenian Property, Ottoman Law and Nationality Policies During the Armenian Genocide, 1915-1916,” in Olaf Farschild, Manfred Kropp, Stephan Dahne, eds., The First Word War as Remembered in the Countries of the Eastern Mediterranean, Wurzburg, Ergon Verlag (Beiruter Texte und Studien, 2006), vol. 99, pp. 46-71.

4) Michael A. Reynolds, “The Ottoman-Russian Struggle for Easter Anatolia and the Caucasus, 1908-1918: Identity, Ideology, and the Geopolitics of World Order,” dissertation, Princeton University, 2003, p.143.

5) Ibid., pp. 201-202.

6) DH.SFR 42-44, Minister to Mosul, Van, Erzerum provinces, June 16, 1914, Special Dept. 255, 241, 32.

7) David Gaunt, Massacres, Resistance, Protectors: Muslim-Christian Relations in Eastern Anatolia During World War I (Piscataway, N.J.: Gorgias Press, 2006), p. 95.

8) Taner Akcam, “The Ottoman Documents and the Genocidal Policies of the Committee for Union and Progress (Ittihat ve Terakki) toward the Armenians in 1915” in Genocide Studies and Prevention I, 2 (2006), p. 135.

9) DH.SFR 46-78, Talat to Van province, Oct. 26, 1914, EUM Spec. 104.

10) DH.SFR 46-102, Minister to Van province, Oct. 29, 1914, EUM Spec. 107.

11) DH.SFR 46-195, Talat to Van province, Nov. 5, 1914, EUM Spec. 113.