The government was founded on the maxim that Christian subjects were regarded as infidel prisoners of war and entitling the authorities of the Ottoman Empire to treat them as slaves. The duties of these slaves included supplying the government with food, and provisions in form of special taxes and fees, in addition to their feudal obligations during times of crisis and uprising. Although Christians were exempt from military service, they had to pay the government a form of human tax, forced to give up infants whom the government recruited to the infamous special forces of the Janissaries, ans their women to the harems of the emirs. The conquests of the Ottoman Turks, as Bertrand Bareilles concludes, were in fact large scale slavery. 29
From the 17th century, the Ottoman Empire began the process of gradual decay. During the time of the great Ottoman sultans, the authorities respected the rights of Christian subjects and they were treated equally in the courts of law. On occasion the Armenians even came under their protection. According to Jorga, Sultan Murad III stalwartly defended the Armenians in Valachie 30 against the other Orthodox Christians who were intent on converting the Armenians to their faith. 31
The situation of the Armenian peasants during the reign of Sultan Suleiman II was not any worse than that of the peasants in Europe.
The era of the regents, who were both the founders of the empire and great military leaders, came to an end at the close of the 16th century. From this time on the Ottoman rulers played an insignificant role and the impotence of the central power resulted in anarchy and chaos determining the empire, with all the power in the hands of local administrators.
Interestingly, the 17th century Constantinople court, and by extension the empire, was ruled not by the sultan, but by his harem: his mother and the favourite wives. From the end of the 17th century to the beginning of the 18th century the land was ruled for fifty years by the great viziers of the country. Later, from the middle of the 18th century to the first years of the 19th century, it was the Janissaries, the eunuchs in the harem of the sultan, who ruled the empire.
The Ottoman Turks, in spite of their harsh discipline and military fortitude, lacked the competence to govern over other people.
The Ottoman regime was characterized by oppression and arbitrariness, but most of all by a corruption on a scale previously unheard of. In time it became custom that the rulers of the provinces bought their titles with large sums from the central government or rented them, agreeing to surrender part of the tax payments of the population under their jurisdiction. Against such a corrupt setting, one can only imagine the crimes which were committed and the violence and oppression to which the people were exposed.
The Christian people, who were subject to extreme humiliation and harassment, after a time formed the only active element in the empire, and historians proudly point out that all the great merchants and bankers in the Ottoman Empire were either Greeks or Armenians. The overlooked element is that behind these Greek merchants there were brave Greek seamen; and supporting the courageous Armenian merchants there were the courageous Armenian caravan-leaders who crossed the troubled and dangerous locations of Central Asia where the Turanian tribes resided, and where no European merchant even dared to set his foot.
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