Origins
In 1908, the Young Turk government came to power in a bloodless revolution. Within a year, Turkey's Armenian population, empowered by the dismissal of Abdul Hamid II, began organizing politically in support of the new government, which promised to place them on equal legal footing with their Muslim counterparts.
Having long endured so-called dhimmi status, and having suffered the brutality and oppression of Hamidian leadership since 1876, the Armenian minority in Cilicia perceived the nascent Young Turk government as a godsend. Christians now being granted the rights to arm themselves and form politically significant groups, it was not long before Abdul Hamid loyalists, themselves acculturated into the system that had perpetrated the Hamidian massacres of the 1890s, came to view the empowerment of the Christian minority as coming at their expense.
The Countercoup of March 1909 wrested control of the government out of the hands of the secularist Young Turks, and Abdul Hamid II briefly recovered his dictatorial powers. Appealing to the reactionary Muslim population with populist rhetoric calling for the re-institution of Islamic law under the banner of a pan-Islamic caliphate, the Sultan mobilized popular support against the Young Turks by identifying himself with the historically Islamic character of the state.
According to one source, when news of a mutiny in Istanbul arrived in Adana, speculation circulated among the Muslim population of an imminent Armenian insurrection. By April 14 the Armenian quarter was attacked by a mob, and many thousands of Armenians were killed in the ensuing weeks.
Other reports emphasize that a "skirmish between Armenians and Turks on April 13 set off a riot that resulted in the pillaging of the bazaars and attacks upon the Armenian quarters." Two days later, more than 2,000 Armenians had been killed as a result. The outbreaks spread throughout the district and by the end of the month as many as 30,000 Armenians were reported killed.
At least one western historian has suggested that the origins of the Adana Massacre lie in an Armenian revolt. Erickson has suggested that the April 14 massacre was a product of an Armenian "uprising", rather than the countercoup.
In his August 1909 report on the massacre, Charles Doughty-Wylie asserts that "The theory of an armed revolution on the part of the Armenians is now generally discredited with the more intelligent people". Doughty-Wylie explained that an uprising could not be said to be taking place without some concentration of forces, or without any effort to make use of the various available strongholds, and in any case the number of Armenians would be "an easy match for the regular Turkish army". "They would not have left their sons and brothers scattered widely through the province for harvest without arms, without any hope of escape."
In those difficult times for the Ottoman Empire and its citizenry, the Armenians were also believed to be a target owing to their relative wealth, and their quarrels with imperial taxation.
A report by England's Adana Vice-Consul Major Charles Doughty-Wylie considers "The Causes of the Massacre". From this document the historian Vahakn Dadrian culls the text:
The Turks, masters for centuries, found their great stumbling block in equality with the Christians... Among the fiercer professors of Islam resentment grew. Were God's adversaries to be the equals of Islam? In every cafe the heathen were speaking great mouthing words of some godless and detested change...
Abdul Hamid became celebrated, in this context, according to Doughty-Wylie, because he "had set the fashion of massacres". From the same document, the Turkish political scientist Kamuran Gurun emphasizes that the right to bear arms had caused a popular fashion of arms-bearing. But, "worse followed", in Doughty-Wylie's words:
The swagger of the arm-bearing Armenian and his ready tongue irritated the ignorant Turks. Threats and insults passed on both sides. Certain Armenian leaders, delegates from Constantinople, and priests (an Armenian priest is in his way an autocrat) urged their congregations to buy arms. It was done openly, indiscreetly, and, in some cases, it might be said wickedly. What can be thought of a preacher, a Russian Armenian, who in a church in this city where there had never been a massacre, preached revenge for the martyrs of 1895? Constitution or none, it was all the same to him. 'Revenge,' he said, 'murder for murder. Buy arms. A Turk for every Armenian of 1895.'
Read more about this topic: Adana Massacre
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