Hamidian Massacres - Massacres

Massacres

The Powers forced Hamid to sign a new reform package designed to curtail the powers of the Hamidiye in October 1895 which, like the Berlin treaty, was never implemented. On October 1, 1895, two thousand Armenians assembled in Constantinople to petition for the implementation of the reforms, but Ottoman police units converged on the rally and violently broke it up. Soon, massacres of Armenians broke out in Constantinople and then engulfed the rest of the Armenian-populated provinces of Bitlis, Diyarbekir, Erzerum, Harput, Sivas, Trabzon and Van. Thousands were killed and many more died during the cold winter of 1895–96. The worst atrocity took place in Urfa, where Ottoman troops burned the Armenian cathedral, in which 3,000 Armenians had taken refuge, and shot at anyone who tried to escape.

Abdul Hamid's Private First Secretary wrote in his memoirs about Abdul Hamid that he "decided to pursue a policy of severity and terror against the Armenians, and in order to succeed in this respect he elected the method of dealing them an economic blow... he ordered that they absolutely avoid negotiating or discussing anything with the Armenians and that they inflict upon them a decisive strike to settle scores."

The French ambassador described Turkey as "literally in flames," with "massacres everywhere" and all Christians being murdered "without distinction." A French vice-consul declared that the Ottoman Empire was "gradually annihilating the Christian element" by "giving the Kurdish chieftains carte blanche to do whatever they please, to enrich themselves at the Christians' expense and to satisfy their men’s whims."

The killings occurred from 1895 until 1897. In that last year, Sultan Hamid declared that the Armenian Question was closed. All the Armenian revolutionaries had either been killed or escaped to Russia. The Ottoman government closed Armenian societies and restricted Armenian political movements. It is impossible to ascertain how many Armenians were killed, although the figures cited by historians have ranged from 100,000 to 300,000. The German pastor Johannes Lepsius meticulously collected data on the destruction and, in his calculations, counted the deaths of 88,243 Armenians, the destitution of 546,000, the destruction of 2,493 villages, the residents of 456 of which were forcibly converted to Islam, and the desecration of 649 churches and monasteries, of which 328 were converted into mosques. Some non-Armenian groups were also attacked during the massacres. The French diplomatic correspondence shows that the Hamidiye carried out massacres not only of Armenians but also of Assyrians living in Diyarbakir, Hasankeyef, Sivas and other parts of Anatolia. The Jewish community in Constantinople hid many Armenians in their homes during the riots and the local synagogue was therefore attacked by Muslims on Yom Kipur in September the same year.