Cilicia - Ottoman Empire

Ottoman Empire

In the fifteenth century, Cilicia fell under Ottoman dominion and officially became known as the Adana Vilayet. Cilicia was one of the most important regions for the Ottoman Armenians because it managed very well to preserve Armenian character throughout the years. In fact, the Cilician highlands were densely populated by Armenian peasants in small but prosperous towns and villages such as Hadjin and Zeitun, two mountainous areas where autonomy was maintained until the nineteenth century. In ports and cities of the Adana plain, commerce and industry were almost entirely in the hands of the Armenians and it remained so thanks to a constant influx of Armenians from the highlands. Their population was continuously increasing in numbers in Cilicia contrarily to other parts of the Ottoman Empire where it was, since 1878, receding due to repression. This is true despite the fact that in 1909, Armenians were subjected to a massacre in Adana. During the 1915 Armenian genocide, the Armenians of Zeitun had organized a successful resistance against the Turkish onslaught. In order to finally subjugate Zeitun, the Turks had to resort to treachery by forcing an Armenian delegation from Marash to ask the Zeituntsi-s to put down their arms. Both the Armenian delegation, and later, the inhabitants of Zeitun, were left with no choice.

From December 1918 to October 1921, after the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I, the French controlled Cilicia. According to the Treaty of Sèvres signed in 1920, Cilicia was to become an independent Armenian state under French Authority. That treaty had never gone into effect because of the Turkish War of Independence. Measures were taken to repopulate the region with Armenians. More than 170,000 refugees, the majority of whom originated from Cilicia, were to be taken back to their homes by the French and British. The Armenians formed the Armenian National Union which acted as an unofficial Cilician Armenian government composed of the four major political parties and three Armenian religious denominations. However, rivalries between the French and British, and Kemalist incursions shattered Armenian aspirations for an autonomous Cilicia. On October 21, 1921, France signed the Treaty of Ankara with the Kemalist revolutionaries and relinquished Cilicia to Turkey.