Zeitun rebellion (1895–96): Difference between revisions
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The Armenians started by conquering the nearby Ottoman garrison, taking 600 Ottoman soldiers and officers as prisoners and placing them under the surveillance of Armenian women.<ref name="PBH"/> The prisoners tried to flee, but failed and were killed. Ottoman troops were repeatedly defeated in their engagements with the Armenian militia. During the negotiations that later settled the conflict, an Ottoman military commander expressed his admiration to Aghasi, one of the leaders of the resistance, for the Armenians' accurate marksmanship and their determination to resist.<ref>Dadrian. ''History of the Armenian Genocide'', p. 130.</ref> |
The Armenians started by conquering the nearby Ottoman garrison, taking 600 Ottoman soldiers and officers as prisoners and placing them under the surveillance of Armenian women.<ref name="PBH"/> The prisoners tried to flee, but failed and were killed. Ottoman troops were repeatedly defeated in their engagements with the Armenian militia. During the negotiations that later settled the conflict, an Ottoman military commander expressed his admiration to Aghasi, one of the leaders of the resistance, for the Armenians' accurate marksmanship and their determination to resist.<ref>Dadrian. ''History of the Armenian Genocide'', p. 130.</ref> |
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According to the [[Ottoman]] government documents, the 15000 armed militia Armenians of the Socialist Armenian Party Hunchak in the central Turkey near Qonya and Malatia, starting from a village names Zeitoun (arabic for olive) attacked a 10 soldiers barak nearby and then nearby restive villages and slaughtered unarmed turkish inhabitans by the thousands, killing 60 children in one village alone and taking trophies cutting breasts of women and feet of men after which then leaders of the Armenians Baron Agasi Abha and major conspirators took refuge in Armenian churches in the capital Constantipol and then six Europpean countries sent requests to the Sultan to recieve the culprits from the churches, and allow others including the three leaders to take asylum in the British consulate in Aleppo. The Russian ambassador sent an explicit warning not to retaliate on Zeitoun, However the Ottoman army sent to the area did not find Armenian rebels in Zeitoun for they were not from the area. The Armenian population of the area were found to have intercepted the Armenian armed men and told them you will not hurt our Muslim neighbours but the Armenian Buchnak militia overwhelmed them. The Armenians made songs commemorating their actions confessing to attacks on unarmed villages "The Zeitoun Elegy: |
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Dehhani sings the praises of Zeitoun, |
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And fourthly Andırın walled In mourning. |
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Fifth, Yenikale was struck, |
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Sixth, the Turks of Geben were made to suffer" |
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and 1990 investigations found the mass graves of children and coraporated verbal testimonies from old survivors who confirmed the old Ottoman documents. |
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<ref name="Yurtsever1999">{{cite book|author=Cezmi Yurtsever|title=The 311 (1895 AD) legacies of the Zeitoun Armenians: the Andırın raid, the Geben disaster, the Çukurhisar genocide and the discovery of mass graves|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=Qc0lAQAAMAAJ|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20060618210923/http://www.armenianreality.com/armenianbooks/311.pdf|archivedate=2013|year=1999|publisher=KÖKSAV|isbn=978-975-7430-17-9}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|author=Ahmet Arslan|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=blhpAAAAMAAJ|title=Review of Armenian Studies|volume=1|year=2002|publisher=ASAM Institute for Armenian Research|location=Ankara|language=English|chapter=The silence of pictures|authormask=|trans_title=|format=online|origyear=|oclc=607889047}}</ref> |
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==Resolution== |
==Resolution== |
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Revision as of 20:46, 11 November 2013
| Zeitun Rebellion of 1895–1896 | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of Hamidian massacres | |||||||
| |||||||
| Belligerents | |||||||
 Ottoman Empire | Hunchak Party | ||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||
|
Ali Bey Mustafa Remzi Pasha Edhem Pasha |
Aghasi (Karapet Tur-Sargsian) Ghazar Shovroian | ||||||
| Strength | |||||||
|
Ottoman Fifth Army Corps 28,000 Turkish troops, 30,000 Muslim irregulars, 12 cannons. Total of 58,000 soldiers. | 1,500 - 6,000 armed militia | ||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||
| 5,000-20,000 soldiers[1] | Very light. | ||||||
The Zeitun Rebellion or Second Zeitun Resistance (Armenian: Զեյթունի երկրորդ գոյամարտը, Zeyt'uni yerkrord goyamartĕ) took place in the winter of 1895-1896, during the Hamidian massacres, when the Armenians of Zeitun (modern Süleymanlı), fearing the prospect of massacre, took up arms to defend themselves from Ottoman troops.[2][3]
Background
The Armenians of Zeitun had historically enjoyed a period of high autonomy in the Ottoman Empire until the nineteenth century. In the first half of the nineteenth century, the central government decided to bring this region of the empire under tighter control and attempted to do this by settling Muslims in the villages around Zeitun and inciting them against the Armenians.[4] This strategy ultimately proved ineffective and in the summer of 1862 the Ottomans sent a military contingent of 12,000 men to Zeitun to reassert government control. The force, however, was held at bay by the Armenians and, through French mediation, the first Zeitun resistance was brought to a close.
The Ottoman government was nevertheless upset with the results of the mediation. In the following decades, it once more resolved to bring the area under control by provoking the Zeitun's Armenians: newly stationed government troops harassed the population and frequent calls for their massacre were issued by a number of Turks.[5] Between the years 1891 and 1895, activists from the Armenian Social Democrat Hunchakian Party visited Cilicia and established a new branch in Zeitun and encouraged the Armenians to resist the oppressive measures of the Ottoman government. It was also at this time that the ruler of the Ottoman Empire, Sultan Abdul Hamid II, decided finally to eliminate one of the only strongholds of Armenian autonomy during the Armenian massacres of 1895-1896.[2]
As the governor of the province was removed and replaced by Avni Bey, a man who held a deep-seated hatred for Armenians, orders were given on October 24, 1895 by Ottoman authorities to use the troops to begin razing several of the Armenians villages near Zeitun.[6]
Resistance
The Armenian citizens of Zeitun, under the leadership of the Hunchakian Party, heard of the ongoing massacres in nearby regions, and thus prepared themselves for armed resistance. Between 1,500 to 6,000 men, armed with flintlock guns and Martini-Henry rifles, were sent to the battlefield and sixteen Armenians were selected to head an administrative body during the siege.[1] With this, the Ottoman military commander sent a wire to Abdul Hamid and told him that the Armenians had started an uprising and were proceeding to massacre Muslims.[7] The Ottoman forces possessed an overwhelming numerical and technological advantage: the entire force consisted of 24 battalions (20,000 troops), twelve cannons, 8,000 men from the Zeibek Division from Smyrna, and 30,000 Kurdish and Circassian irregulars.[7]
The Armenians started by conquering the nearby Ottoman garrison, taking 600 Ottoman soldiers and officers as prisoners and placing them under the surveillance of Armenian women.[1] The prisoners tried to flee, but failed and were killed. Ottoman troops were repeatedly defeated in their engagements with the Armenian militia. During the negotiations that later settled the conflict, an Ottoman military commander expressed his admiration to Aghasi, one of the leaders of the resistance, for the Armenians' accurate marksmanship and their determination to resist.[8]
According to the Ottoman government documents, the 15000 armed militia Armenians of the Socialist Armenian Party Hunchak in the central Turkey near Qonya and Malatia, starting from a village names Zeitoun (arabic for olive) attacked a 10 soldiers barak nearby and then nearby restive villages and slaughtered unarmed turkish inhabitans by the thousands, killing 60 children in one village alone and taking trophies cutting breasts of women and feet of men after which then leaders of the Armenians Baron Agasi Abha and major conspirators took refuge in Armenian churches in the capital Constantipol and then six Europpean countries sent requests to the Sultan to recieve the culprits from the churches, and allow others including the three leaders to take asylum in the British consulate in Aleppo. The Russian ambassador sent an explicit warning not to retaliate on Zeitoun, However the Ottoman army sent to the area did not find Armenian rebels in Zeitoun for they were not from the area. The Armenian population of the area were found to have intercepted the Armenian armed men and told them you will not hurt our Muslim neighbours but the Armenian Buchnak militia overwhelmed them. The Armenians made songs commemorating their actions confessing to attacks on unarmed villages "The Zeitoun Elegy: Dehhani sings the praises of Zeitoun, And fourthly Andırın walled In mourning. Fifth, Yenikale was struck, Sixth, the Turks of Geben were made to suffer" and 1990 investigations found the mass graves of children and coraporated verbal testimonies from old survivors who confirmed the old Ottoman documents. [9][10]
Resolution
Through the intervention of the six major European powers, the Armenians of Zeitun ended the resistance. The Hunchak activists were allowed to go into exile, the tax burden was eased, and a Christian sub-governor was appointed. Due to the freezing temperatures, thousands of Turks died and many others died in hospitals from wounds sustained in battle.[7] The figures on casualties are heavily conflicting but all agree that the Ottoman forces suffered greatly. The British Consulate reported on January 6, 1896 that "at least 5,000 have been killed though common report swells the number to 10,000."[11] The Austrian Consulate based in Aleppo stated that the Armenians killed 1,300 Turks in the final battle alone.[11] The British consul estimated that combat and non-combat fatalities among all Armenians neared the figure of 6,000.[11] Pierre Quillard, a French writer, estimated that Ottoman losses totaled no less than 20,000 men.[1]
The Armenians lived on in relative peace until World War I, when they were massacred and deported from Zeitun in 1915.[12]
See also
Notes
- ^ a b c d Template:Hy icon Nersisyan, Mkrtich G. "Զեյթունցիների 1895-1896 թթ. Ինքնապաշտպանական Հերոսամարտը" ("The Heroic Self-Defense of the People of Zeitun in 1895-1896"). Patma-Banasirakan Handes. № 1-2 (143-144), 1996, pp. 7-16. With Russian abstract.
- ^ a b Template:Hy icon Kurdoghlian, Mihran (1996). Պատմութիւն Հայոց (History of Armenia), Volume III. Athens, Greece: Council of National Education Publishing. pp. 28–29.
- ^ Hovannisian, Richard G. "The Armenian Question in the Ottoman Empire, 1876-1914" in The Armenian People From Ancient to Modern Times, Volume II: Foreign Dominion to Statehood: The Fifteenth Century to the Twentieth Century. Richard G. Hovannisian (ed.) New York: St. Martin's Press, p. 223. ISBN 0-312-10168-6.
- ^ Barsoumian, Hagop. "The Eastern Question and the Tanzimat Era" in The Armenian People From Ancient to Modern Times, Volume II, p. 200.
- ^ Dadrian, Vahakn N (1995). The History of the Armenian Genocide: Ethnic Conflict from the Balkans to Anatolia to the Caucasus. Oxford: Berghahn Books. p. 127. ISBN 1-57181-666-6.
- ^ Balakian, Peter (2003). The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America's Response. New York: HarperCollins. p. 60. ISBN 0-06-055870-9.
- ^ a b c Dadrian. History of the Armenian Genocide, p. 128.
- ^ Dadrian. History of the Armenian Genocide, p. 130.
- ^ Cezmi Yurtsever (1999). The 311 (1895 AD) legacies of the Zeitoun Armenians: the Andırın raid, the Geben disaster, the Çukurhisar genocide and the discovery of mass graves (PDF). KÖKSAV. ISBN 978-975-7430-17-9. Archived from the original on 2013.
{{cite book}}: Check date values in:|archivedate=(help) - ^ Ahmet Arslan (2002). "The silence of pictures". Review of Armenian Studies (online). Vol. 1. Ankara: ASAM Institute for Armenian Research. OCLC 607889047.
{{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameters:|authormask=and|trans_title=(help) - ^ a b c Dadrian. History of the Armenian Genocide, p. 129.
- ^ On which, see Aram Arkun, "Zeytun and the Commencement of the Armenian Genocide," in A Question of Genocide: Armenians and Turks at the End of the Ottoman Empire, eds. R.G. Suny, Fatma Muge Goçek, and Norman Naimark. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011, pp. 221-243.
Further reading
- Template:Hy icon Aghasi. Զեյթուն եւ իր շրջականները [Zeitun and its Environs]. Beirut: Shirak Publishing, 1968.
- Template:Hy icon Mkrtchyan, Levon. Զեյթունի ապստամբությունը [The Zeitun Uprising]. Yerevan: Pan-Armenian and Armenian Educational and Cultural Union, 1995.
External links
Hogarth, David George (1911). . In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 28 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 965, 966.