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Index

Armenia

The Urartu Civilisation

Victory for Independence

Artashisian Dynasty on the Armenian Throne

Armenia caught between Rome and the Arsacids

The Acceptance of Christianity

Defending Christianity

Armenia Under the Bagratouni Dynasty

Cilicia - the New Armenia

Armenia Under Turanian Rule

The Renaissance or the Resurrection of Armenia

The Eastern Question

Russia in the Caucasus

The Armenian Question

Battle on Two Fronts

Tsarist Russia Against the Armenians

The Revolution of the Young Turks and the Armenian People on the Eve of World War I

The First World War

The Resurrection of Armenia

Armenia on the Road to Independence, 1918

- Armenia on the Road to Independence, 1918

Eastern Armenia

Western Armenia

"The Fateful Years" (1914-1917)

"Hopes and Emotions" (March-October, 1917)

The Bolshevik Revolution and Armenia

Transcaucasia Adrift (November, 1917

Dilemmas (March-April, 1918)

War and Independence (April-May, 1918)

The Republics of Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia

The Suppliants (June-October, 1918)

In conclusion

Soviet Armenia

The Second Independent Republic of Armenia

Epilogue

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The Ottoman Policy

The Ottoman government therefore successfully prevented the realisation of paragraph 61 of the Berlin Treaty, They were not, however, content with only this.

The policy of the Ottoman government, until 1876, was not directly anti-Armenian, even though it supported the situation of the Kurds in Armenia. This pitiful existence of the Armenian nation constituted of complete submission of the people to the total chaos which prevailed in the Ottoman Empire, rather than being based on a concrete governmental program. The involvement of the Constantinople government in the Armenian Question during earlier decades, particularly with regards to the defence of the Armenian Church against the Catholic and Orthodox churches, was only to ensure the balance of the churches. 80

In year 1863, the Ottoman government issued an order according to which Armenians would receive certain rights within the framework of the "Hatti Homayoun". 81

However, in the aftermath of the Berlin Treaty, the Ottoman Empire was seized by panic and fear. Instead of learning from its mistakes in the Balkans and Bulgaria, which had resulted in the loss of the Empire's two most rich and fertile provinces, and implementing the necessary reforms to prevent this happening again, the establishment focused on the total integration of all non-Turkish people within the empire, especially those, like the Armenians, who were thought of as more developed. Mandelstam writes: "Without fear of exaggeration, I can say that the policy of the sultan was exclusively bent toward decimation, and in some cases assimilation, of the Christian people in his empire. Sultan Abdul Hamid, who in the beginning of his reign had suffered great losses, had not learned at all from these events, but only acted with even greater suspicion towards the European involvement in the questions of his realm, and believed that these interventions could not be stopped with the implementation of reforms, but only through the gradual elimination of the minorities which were causing these interventions." 82

It was the Armenians in particular who the Ottoman rulers saw as the greatest potential threat to the entire Ottoman Empire 83 The Armenian situation was viewed as akin to that which had existed in Bulgaria, and therefore one which should be dealt with before it was too late. 84

From 1878 onwards, the Ottoman policy revolved around the plan to, once and for all, destroy the basis for an Armenian self-governance, through the deliberate decimation of the Armenians and the transformation of the Armenian ethnical element into an almost insignificant minority.

One of the very first measures of the Ottoman government in the realisation of this plan was to change the borders of the Armenian provinces. 85 New borders were drawn so that the relative majority of the Armenian ethnical groups were radically decreased within these provinces. By reapportioning the Armenian provinces so that they included Muslim majorities, the Ottoman government succeeded in changing the ethnical demography in the Armenian provinces. 86

From 1877 to 1878, this policy was furthered through the mass murders of large numbers of the Armenians in Alashkert and Bayazid, creating a land strip with a Kurdish majority between Eastern Armenia and the regions of Van and Moush, which had Armenian majorities.