The Inside Assyria Discussion Forum #5

=> The Armenians in Turkey

The Armenians in Turkey

Posted by pancho (Moderator) - Friday, June 27 2008, 19:37:17 (CEST)
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These excerpts come from Dr Joseph’s book, "Muslim-Christian Relations", State University of New York Press, Albany, 1983.

“By the mid-1850s the position of the Protestants had been strengthened; the Crimean War, 1854-56, which saw France and England cooperating with Turkey against Russia, resulted in liberal policies toward the French-protected Catholics and British-supported Protestants. Even the traditional death penalty for conversion from Islam to Christianity was abrogated at this time ‘and Muslims were legally permitted to receive baptism,’ even though only an occasional Muslim would take ‘advantage’ of that right.”

“…by the end of the 1850s, the missionaries of the American board had almost abandoned Mosul, concentrating their efforts in Turkey on Diyarbakr and Mardin, where they had developed a strong interest in the Armenians. By 1860 the various missionary stations of the American board, established in such Armenian centers as Sivas, Bitlis, and Van, were organized into the ‘Mission in Eastern Turkey’.”

“Jacobite Protestant congregations were usually a part of the Armenian Protestant churches. They benefited from the schools and hospitals that were established to serve the Armenian Christians, their fellow Monophysite neighbors.”

“The defeat of Turkey by Russia in 1878, and the subsequent British intervention in the affairs of the Christians of Anatolia, gave rise to high hopes within missionary circles and led to the establishment of a number of American institutions of higher learning throughout ‘Turkey in Asia’, where there were Armenians….These political changes raised the Protestants in the estimation of the Jacobites, whose conflicts and grievances at this time were directed more against the French-supported Catholic proselytization than they were against the Ottoman government.”

“Russian expansion southward through Transcaucasia was mainly at the expense of Iran and Turkey and involved territory inhabited by native Christians.”

“Russian hold on these territories, however, did not last long; it was not until the end of the eighteenth century when, under Catherine the Great, the Crimea was annexed, that the way was paved for Russian expansion through the Caucasus, threatening eastern Turkey as well as northwestern Iran.”

“During the war Armenian volunteers joined the Russian troops, lending them invaluable assistance. From then on most of the Persian Armenians would be under Russian rule and would attract thousands of their brethren from Eastern Turkey, a new battleground between Russia and the Ottoman Empire.”

“The war with Iran (1813, mine) had hardly ended when the Russians overran Turkish territory; in the summer of 1828, Russian armies advanced westward as far as the citadel city of Erzerum, taking Kars along the way. ‘Along the entire route, Armenians welcomed the Russian troops (maybe that’s why Assyrians are so child-like…they believe no matter what THEY do to bring it on, no one is justified in punishing them…and their parents must teach them this) as liberators and rejoiced that the day of deliverance was at hand’. Their joy, unfortunately for them, did not last long. The Treaty of Adrianople ended the war the following year. The Russian troops began to withdraw from Turkish territory , followed by a stream of Armenian refugees fleeing their homeland, most probably afraid of the reprisals they expected.”

“…Almost the entire region from the Caspian Sea to the Black Sea, and from the Caucasus mountains in the north to the Turko-Persian frontier in the south, was embroiled in a civil war of the most bloody and ruthless character, inflaming age-old animosities by religious passions and fanaticism.”

“The social, cultural, political and military developments of the next few decades would, by the early twentieth century, see the cessation of Christian existence in Eastern Anatolia, where Eastern Christians had lived for centuries.”

“With Russia established as an unwelcome neighbor on her eastern borders, Turkey began to suspect Christian loyalties there. After the mid-nineteenth century the sultan’s government was certain that in the course of future events, the most serious attacks of the Russians against the Turks would be directed against the eastern provinces of Asia Minor. The Turks suspected that in a future war, as in the past two conflicts, the Ottoman Christians would probably side with their co-religionists from the north. They especially suspected the Armenians, the leading millet among non-European Christians of the empire.
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