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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 First World War

"No action in the defence of its decency and its people can be considered as treason against its country." T. Mazarik

Pan Turkism and Pan Turanism

Just before the outbreak of the First World War, the policy of Turkey revolved around two major ideologies: Pan Turkism and Pan Turanism. The first policy eschewed the compulsory turkification of all non-Turkish peoples in the empire; the latter decreed the gathering all Turkish peoples in one enormous Turkish Empire, to stretch from the Dardanelles all the way to Central Asia. Pan Turanism counted the epic poet Ziya Gök Alp and theorists such as Tekin Alp amongst its supporters.

Pan Turanism, requiring the collection of the ten million Turks in the Ottoman Empire and their unification with another 20 million other Turkish Muslims in Central Asia, necessarily entailed the dissolution of the Russian Empire. Only after such an eventuality could the Turks could be united with peoples which they called their ethnical brothers, Tatars (present Azerbaijanis), Turkmen, Uzbeks, Tajiks, Kirghiz and Kazaks. 3 By extension, the dream of Pan Turanism could not be fulfilled without military support from a major power; and under the prevailing circumstances the major power could not be any other than Germany.

The First World War, therefore, appeared as an unexpected and opportune setting for the Ottoman elite to unite with Germany in the pursuit of their ideals.

There remained one significant obstacle to the twin Ottoman ideologies. Even with the hoped-for collapse of Russia, the Christian non-Turkish Armenians were an obvious hindrance, geographically separating the Ottoman Turks from the rest of their Tatar cousins by the Caspian Sea in the Russian Empire, the one chink in the chain of Turanian peoples stretching all the way to Mongolia. The leaders of the Union and Progress Committee first prompted the Armenians to start an armed revolt in Eastern Armenia and Transcaucasia, in return for which they were promised self-governance for Eastern Armenia and the neighbouring areas in Western Armenia after the war. The leadership of the Dashnak party rejected this offer during its Erzurum Congress in August 1914, replying that, in the eventual war between Turkey and Russia, the Armenians were obliged to fight for their respective host country. As Winston Churchill remarked, "the Armenians preferred war, involving killing brothers on two fronts, to the Turkish suggestion of treason against the Russians." 4

The Armenian refusal angered the Turkish elite, and once Turkey had joined Germany in the war in October 1914, they decided to rid themselves of the Armenians once and for all. At the beginning of September, Turkey had violently expelled the Norwegian observer, Hoff, thus violating the treaty of February 8, 1914, and emptying Western Armenia of all the representatives of the western major powers and possible witnesses of the events to follow.