Rise of Nationalism in The Balkans - Armenians

Armenians

Armenian national awakening in the Ottoman Empire was the section of "Armenian national liberation movement" of the Armenian effort to re-establish an Armenian state (First Armenian Republic) in the historic Armenian homelands of eastern Asia Minor. The Transcaucasus Armenian national awakening occurred in the Russian Armenia.

Until Tanzimat reforms were established, the Armenian millet was under the supervision of an Ethnarch ('national' leader), the Armenian Apostolic Church. The Armenian millet had a great deal of power - they set their own laws and collected and distributed their own taxes. During the Tanzimat period, a series of constitutional reforms provided a limited modernization of the Ottoman Empire also to the Armenians. In 1856, the Hatt-ı Hümayun promised equality for all Ottoman citizens irrespective of their ethnicity and confession, widening the scope of the 1839 Hatt-ı Şerif of Gülhane.

To deal with the Armenian national awakening, the Ottomans gradually gave more rights to its Armenian and other Christian citizens. In 1863 the Armenian National Constitution (Ottoman Turkish:"Nizâmnâme-i Millet-i Ermeniyân") was the Ottoman Empire approved form of the "Code of Regulations" composed of 150 articles drafted by the "Armenian intelligentsia", which defined the powers of Patriarch (position in Ottoman Millet) and newly formed "Armenian National Assembly". The reformist period peaked with the Constitution, called the Kanûn-ı Esâsî (meaning "Basic Law" in Ottoman Turkish), written by members of the Young Ottomans, which was promulgated on 23 November 1876. It established freedom of belief and equality of all citizens before the law. The Armenian National Assembly formed a "governance in governance" to eliminate the aristocratic dominance (Amira) of the Armenian nobles by development of the political strata among the Armenian society.