In addition, there were many Muslims in both Bulgaria and Armenia, whilst the Muslim populations was relatively small in Serbia, Greece and Romania.
When in 1870 the Bulgarians first showed signs of wanting to put an end to the oppressive regime, which had become unbearable for them, the Turks reacted more violently than before. The initial reaction of other nations was the same as that to the Armenian situation some years later, in that it was believed that the Bulgarians were a primitive and undeveloped people without any will to fight. 73 The Turkish government, meanwhile, began to implement another means of repression, by which people of other ethnicities were compulsorily transferred to Bulgaria in order to reduce the Bulgarians to a minority in their own country. The Turks even incited these immigrants to commit murder and plundering. 74/359 When in 1876 the Bulgarians attempted to defend themselves against these plundering and murdering, the Turks instated a number of massacres in which 25,000 people lost their lives (in Batak alone 5,000 of the 7,000 population of the city were massacred 75).
The catastrophe, as was famously described by Gladstone, began a wave of anti-Turkish sentiment in Europe, especially in England, and was the cause of major incitement in Russia. Disraeli, the British prime minister at the time, tried in vain to deny these horrible deeds and even tried to conceal them with lies and excuses. 76 The reality was exposed by the American chief consul in Constantinople, and English journalists, and aroused a wave of wrath and hatred in Britain. 77
In the end, despite the efforts of the Turks to solve the Bulgarian Question by crushing the revolt of the Bulgarian people, they were undone by the Russian intervention. The war between Russia and the Ottoman Empire from 1877 to 1878, led directly to the emergence of an independent Bulgaria.
Needless to say, this gradual liberation of the Christian people in the Balkans exerted influence on the Armenians and strengthened their striving and determination to improve their own situation, and to end to the oppressive regime which had been forced upon them.
In those days, however, the Armenians, in contrast to the people in the Balkans, petitioned neither for the creation of an independent Armenia nor for the annexation of Western Armenia to Eastern Armenia. The creation of an independent Armenian state was not possible since Tsarist Russia, for reasons mentioned above, would not accept the creation of such a state at its border. The annexation of Western Armenia to Eastern Armenia would elevate the Armenians in Eastern Armenia from minority status. However, this alteration too was in opposition to the Russian policy of compulsory russification of minorities and would have prevented the religious harassment and the general oppression which the Russian regime had initiated in the Caucasus. Furthermore, the Armenians, more than the Bulgarians, had adapted to the life, government and economic situation of the Ottoman Empire.
For these reasons, the Armenians demanded only improvements in their lives within the framework of the Ottoman Empire. In the documents with Armenian names submitted to the Constantinople Conference (1876) and the Berlin Congress (1878), the European council of ministers, and also within Armenian public opinion, their demands did not contain the slightest mention of an independent Armenian government nor the annexation of Western Armenia to Eastern Armenia. The demands of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire were limited to improvement of the excruciating and unbearable situation in Western Armenia, and the allowance of Armenian participation in the defence and rule of this area. 78
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