Armenian Organization and Ideology under Ottoman Rule

Armenian Organization and Ideology under Ottoman Rule
Author: Dikran Mesrob Kaligian
Publisher: Transaction Publishers
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2011-12-31
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1412848342

This book provides a comprehensive picture of Armeno-Turkish relations for the brief period of Ottoman Constitutional rule between 1908 and 1914. Kaligian integrates internal documents of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, and existing research on the last years of the empire, as well as the archives of the British, American, and German diplomatic corps. By reducing the overemphasis on central government policies and by describing unofficial contacts, political relations, and provincial administration and conditions, Kaligian provides a unified account of this key period in Ottoman history. Kaligian sets out to resolve many of the conflicting conclusions in the current historiography—including the most central issue, the Armenian Revolutionary Federation relations with the Turkish Committee of Union and Progress. It is impossible to obtain a true picture of Armeno-Turkish relations without an accurate analysis of their two leading parties. This study finds that the ARF was torn between maintaining relations with a CUP that had failed to implement promised reforms and was doing little to prevent increasing attacks on the Armenian population, or break off relations thus ending any realistic chance for the constitutional system to succeed. The party continued to stake its reputation and resources on the success of constitutional government even after the trauma of the 1909 Adana massacres. The decisive issue was the failure of land restitution. This book sets the record straight in terms of understanding Armeno-Turkish relations during this short but pivotal period. Kaligian’s study, the first of its kind, shows that the party’s internal deliberations support the conclusion that it did remain loyal and contradicts the view that the party’s only aim was to incite a rebellion against Ottoman rule. The author has done an excellent job of leading the reader through this rich history, using primary source information to bridge the gaps from theory, to analysis, to evidence.

Armenian Organization and Ideology Under Ottoman Rule

Armenian Organization and Ideology Under Ottoman Rule
Author: Dikran Kaligian
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 280
Release: 2017-09-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 1351531182

This book provides a comprehensive picture of Armeno-Turkish relations for the brief period of Ottoman Constitutional rule between 1908 and 1914. Kaligian integrates internal documents of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, and existing research on the last years of the empire, as well as the archives of the British, American, and German diplomatic corps. By reducing the overemphasis on central government policies and by describing unofficial contacts, political relations, and provincial administration and conditions, Kaligian provides a unified account of this key period in Ottoman history. Kaligian sets out to resolve many of the conflicting conclusions in the current historiography-including the most central issue, the Armenian Revolutionary Federation relations with the Turkish Committee of Union and Progress. It is impossible to obtain a true picture of Armeno-Turkish relations without an accurate analysis of their two leading parties. This study finds that the ARF was torn between maintaining relations with a CUP that had failed to implement promised reforms and was doing little to prevent increasing attacks on the Armenian population, or break off relations thus ending any realistic chance for the constitutional system to succeed. The party continued to stake its reputation and resources on the success of constitutional government even after the trauma of the 1909 Adana massacres. The decisive issue was the failure of land reform. This book sets the record straight in terms of understanding Armeno-Turkish relations during this short but pivotal period. Kaligian's study, the first of its kind, shows that the party's internal deliberations support the conclusion that it did remain loyal and contradicts the view that the party's only aim was to incite a rebellion against Ottoman rule. The author has done an excellent job of leading the reader through this rich history, using primary source information to bridge the gaps from theory, to analysis, to evidence.

Genocide in the Ottoman Empire

Genocide in the Ottoman Empire
Author: George N. Shirinian
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 443
Release: 2017-02-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1785334336

The final years of the Ottoman Empire were catastrophic ones for its non-Turkish, non-Muslim minorities. From 1913 to 1923, its rulers deported, killed, or otherwise persecuted staggering numbers of citizens in an attempt to preserve “Turkey for the Turks,” setting a modern precedent for how a regime can commit genocide in pursuit of political ends while largely escaping accountability. While this brutal history is most widely known in the case of the Armenian genocide, few appreciate the extent to which the Empire’s Assyrian and Greek subjects suffered and died under similar policies. This comprehensive volume is the first to broadly examine the genocides of the Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks in comparative fashion, analyzing the similarities and differences among them and giving crucial context to present-day calls for recognition.

Voices from the Past

Voices from the Past
Author: Vahe Habeshian
Publisher: Hairenik Association
Total Pages: 136
Release: 2014-04-16
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1940573092

In the late 19th century, the Armenian nation was ruled by two great empires: the Ottoman and the Russian. The sultans ruled over the bulk of the Armenians' historical homeland, while the tsars controlled Armenian lands in the Transcaucasus. Often, when those empires clashed, they did so on territories that the Armenians had called their own for three millennia. On the verge of the modern era, both empires were in decline... and desperate to repel the revolutionary-socialist and liberal-democratic ideas emanating from Europe—and to suppress the national liberation movements of the peoples under their rule. The Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF) was founded in those days of sociopolitical ferment, in 1890, in Tbilisi, Georgia. The principal aim of the new organization was the liberation of Armenians under Ottoman rule, but its goals soon evolved to include freedom for Armenians under Russian rule, as well. The biographies and writings of ARF-affiliated statesmen, intellectuals, military commanders, revolutionaries, and rank-and-file fighters included in this book reflect the arch of Armenian history from the 1890s to the 1940s. They contain not merely points of view but larger ideas, ideologies, worldviews, and hard-won life-lessons that energized and guided the lives of individual party members, the collective outlook of ARF, as well as the movement the party engendered. That said, this compilation is merely a small sampling of the thousands of personalities and their works that could have been included. Nevertheless, it contains invaluable insights that would benefit those who would involve themselves in the affairs of Armenia and the Diaspora today, for the past has much to teach those seeking to build the future.

Armenian Organization and Ideology Under Ottoman Rule, 1908-1914

Armenian Organization and Ideology Under Ottoman Rule, 1908-1914
Author: Dikran Mesrob Kaligian
Publisher: Armenian Studies
Total Pages: 262
Release: 2011
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781412842457

This book provides a comprehensive picture of Armeno-Turkish relations for the brief period of Ottoman Constitutional rule between 1908 and 1914. Kaligian integrates internal documents of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, and existing research on the last years of the empire, as well as the archives of the British, American, and German diplomatic corps. By reducing the overemphasis on central government policies and by describing unofficial contacts, political relations, and provincial administration and conditions, Kaligian provides a unified account of this key period in Ottoman history. Kaligian sets out to resolve many of the conflicting conclusions in the current historiography—including the most central issue, the Armenian Revolutionary Federation relations with the Turkish Committee of Union and Progress. It is impossible to obtain a true picture of Armeno-Turkish relations without an accurate analysis of their two leading parties. This study finds that the ARF was torn between maintaining relations with a CUP that had failed to implement promised reforms and was doing little to prevent increasing attacks on the Armenian population, or break off relations thus ending any realistic chance for the constitutional system to succeed. The party continued to stake its reputation and resources on the success of constitutional government even after the trauma of the 1909 Adana massacres. The decisive issue was the failure of land restitution. This book sets the record straight in terms of understanding Armeno-Turkish relations during this short but pivotal period. Kaligian's study, the first of its kind, shows that the party's internal deliberations support the conclusion that it did remain loyal and contradicts the view that the party's only aim was to incite a rebellion against Ottoman rule. The author has done an excellent job of leading the reader through this rich history, using primary source information to bridge the gaps from theory, to analysis, to evidence.

Shattered Dreams of Revolution

Shattered Dreams of Revolution
Author: Bedross Der Matossian
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2014-10-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780804791472

The Ottoman revolution of 1908 is a study in contradictions—a positive manifestation of modernity intended to reinstate constitutional rule, yet ultimately a negative event that shook the fundamental structures of the empire, opening up ethnic, religious, and political conflicts. Shattered Dreams of Revolution considers this revolutionary event to tell the stories of three important groups: Arabs, Armenians, and Jews. The revolution raised these groups' expectations for new opportunities of inclusion and citizenship. But as post-revolutionary festivities ended, these euphoric feelings soon turned to pessimism and a dramatic rise in ethnic tensions. The undoing of the revolutionary dreams could be found in the very foundations of the revolution itself. Inherent ambiguities and contradictions in the revolution's goals and the reluctance of both the authors of the revolution and the empire's ethnic groups to come to a compromise regarding the new political framework of the empire ultimately proved untenable. The revolutionaries had never been wholeheartedly committed to constitutionalism, thus constitutionalism failed to create a new understanding of Ottoman citizenship, grant equal rights to all citizens, and bring them under one roof in a legislative assembly. Today as the Middle East experiences another set of revolutions, these early lessons of the Ottoman Empire, of unfulfilled expectations and ensuing discontent, still provide important insights into the contradictions of hope and disillusion seemingly inherent in revolution.

The Architects of Ottoman Constantinople

The Architects of Ottoman Constantinople
Author: Alyson Wharton-Durgaryan
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 616
Release: 2015-02-26
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 0857738135

The Balyan family were a dynasty of architects, builders and property owners who acted as the official architects to the Ottoman Sultans throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. Originally Armenian, the family is responsible for some of the most famous Ottoman buildings in existence, many of which are regarded as masterpieces of their period – including the Dolmabahçe Palace (built between 1843 and 1856), parts of the Topkap? Palace, the Ç?ra?an Palace and the Ortaköy Mosque. Forging a unique style based around European contemporary architecture but with distinctive Ottoman flourishes, the family is an integral part of Ottoman history. As Alyson Wharton's beautifully illustrated book reveals, the Balyan's own history, of falling in and out of favour with increasingly autocratic Sultans, serves as a record of courtly power in the Ottoman era and is uniquely intertwined with the history of Istanbul itself.

Ottomans and Armenians

Ottomans and Armenians
Author: Edward J. Erickson
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 478
Release: 2013-11-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 1137362219

Covering the period from 1878-1915, Ottomans and Armenians is a military history of the Ottoman army and the counterinsurgency campaigns it waged in the last days of the Ottoman empire. Although Ottomans were among the most active practitioners of counterinsurgency campaigning in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, in the vast literature available on counterinsurgency in the early twenty-first century, there is very little scholarly analysis of how Ottomans reacted to insurgency and then went about counterinsurgency. This book presents the thesis that the Ottoman government developed an evolving, 35-year, empire-wide array of counterinsurgency practices that varied in scope and execution depending on the strategic importance of the affected provinces.

The Young Turks' Crime Against Humanity

The Young Turks' Crime Against Humanity
Author: Taner Akçam
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 529
Release: 2012
Genre: History
ISBN: 0691153337

Introducing new evidence from more than 600 secret Ottoman documents, this book demonstrates in unprecedented detail that the Armenian Genocide and the expulsion of Greeks from the late Ottoman Empire resulted from an official effort to rid the empire of its Christian subjects. Presenting these previously inaccessible documents along with expert context and analysis, Taner Akçam's most authoritative work to date goes deep inside the bureaucratic machinery of Ottoman Turkey to show how a dying empire embraced genocide and ethnic cleansing.Although the deportation and killing of Armenians was internationally condemned in 1915 as a "crime against humanity and civilization," the Ottoman government initiated a policy of denial that is still maintained by the Turkish Republic. The case for Turkey's "official history" rests on documents from the Ottoman imperial archives, to which access has been heavily restricted until recently. It is this very source that Akçam now uses to overturn the official narrative.The documents presented here attest to a late-Ottoman policy of Turkification, the goal of which was no less than the radical demographic transformation of Anatolia. To that end, about one-third of Anatolia's 15 million people were displaced, deported, expelled, or massacred, destroying the ethno-religious diversity of an ancient cultural crossroads of East and West, and paving the way for the Turkish Republic.By uncovering the central roles played by demographic engineering and assimilation in the Armenian Genocide, this book will fundamentally change how this crime is understood and show that physical destruction is not the only aspect of the genocidal process.