by Benny Morris
in large numbers. Fierce fighting between Armenians and Ottomans in Van
and Zeytun in early 1915 had a similar effect. In March Zeytun became the
first site of mass deportation. While the wider policy was still being designed,
the central government ordered Zeytunlis removed southward in an augury
of what was to come.
All of this came hard on the heels of the CUP government’s first foray into
ethnic cleansing: the expulsion in 1914 of tens of thousands of Ottoman
Greeks. The government did not apply the Greek policy to Armenians; what
began in 1915 was far more vicious. But the Greek removal does demon-
strate that Armenian deportation was not sui generis. The campaign against
the Greeks is further evidence, albeit circumstantial, that the CUP had the
motivation and capacity to commit premeditated ethnic cleansing— that po-
liti cal will, not the exigencies of the Great War, underlay mass murder.
Radicalizing the CUP: The Eve of World War I and Greek Removal
For the Eu ro pean powers, the outbreak of world war in the summer of 1914
shattered a long era of relative peace. But for the Ottomans, who secretly joined
the Central Powers in August and entered the fray at the end of October,
the Great War was just one more round in a long stretch of continuous
bloodletting.
Tensions had been simmering with Eu ro pean powers for a century, occa-
sionally flaring into armed conflicts with Balkan peoples and the great powers of Rus sia, France, and the United Kingdom. In the years immediately preceding
World War I, the Ottomans suffered two serious defeats. First, in 1911–1912,
The Young Turk s
they fought a brave but unsuccessful war with Italy over Tripolitania (Trablus-
garp) vilayet, encompassing much of present- day Libya. An estimated 14,000
Ottoman soldiers died. Then, emboldened by the Italians’ success, the Balkan
League of Bulgaria, Greece, Serbia, and Montenegro attacked the Ottoman
Empire in October 1912.
The First Balkan War was replete with massacres and ethnic cleansing by
both sides. Christian and Muslim villages were razed, their inhabitants mur-
dered or deported. By the time a ceasefire was announced in May 1913, the
League had pushed the Ottomans out of almost all their remaining Eu ro pean
territories.7 But matters did not end there. Unsatisfied with the division of the spoils, Bulgaria then attacked its former allies, Serbia and Greece, and was in
turn attacked by the Ottomans and Romanians, who saw an opportunity to
recoup losses. By the end of the Second Balkan War in August 1913, the
Ottomans had retaken Edirne, their Thracian capital.
More than 200,000 people died in the Balkan wars, and millions lost their
homes. For the Turks, the most dramatic outcome was the influx of one and
a half million destitute Muslims. These muhacirs joined the thousands who
had arrived during the Russo- Turkish war of 1877–1878. Many came with
harrowing stories about murderous Christians.8 Crammed into towns around
Anatolia, the muhacirs were a constant reminder of humiliation and defeat.
The population balance further shifted toward Muslims as Constantinople
encouraged Bulgarian and Greek subjects to leave and thereby create space
for muhacirs. The state facilitated the departure of Christians by easing bu-
reaucratic requirements and simplifying the visa- application pro cess.9
CUP leaders viewed the Balkan fiasco as part of a conspiracy led by the
Christian powers, above all Rus sia. Using the fledgling Balkan states, which
they helped create through constant pressure on Constantinople, the Christian
powers aimed to destroy their empire and replace it with servile Christian
statelets. This theory prevailed despite the fact that, in the years immediately
preceding the war, Armenian nationalists sought to maintain peace and the
empire itself. In 1909 the Dashnaks signed an agreement of cooperation with
the CUP to preserve “the sacred Ottoman fatherland from separation and divi-
sion.” The Hunchaks, in a similar move, affirmed that they would act exclu-
sively within the law.10
A More Turkish Empire
Muslim refugees in a mosque in Salonica. During and after the Balkan wars (1912–1913), a new wave poured into Turkey, among them relatives of the Young Turk leadership.
For Armenians, these agreements were major concessions, indicating their
willingness to cooperate despite enduring Muslim- Christian in equality. In
heavi ly Armenian Erzurum vilayet in 1913, only 18 of 2,193 officials were
Christians.11 During the run-up to the world war, the Kurds and the authorities
in the eastern provinces continued to harass Armenians. The Armenian as-
sembly detailed 7,000 cases of illegal land seizures between 1890 and 1910.12
The CUP may have earned some Armenian good will with its handling of
a massacre against Christians in Adana vilayet, in Cilicia, in 1909. Crucially,
the CUP was not in power during the two- week period when the killing oc-
curred. It came in April, less than a year after the Young Turk revolution, in
the midst of a counter- coup staged by disgruntled soldiers. Ministers who had
just taken office fled Constantinople. Just a fortnight later, with the aid of army commanders, the CUP launched a successful counteroffensive and was back
The Young Turk s
in control. But during the short spell of anarchy, the vilayet was the scene of
a large- scale pogrom.13
Tensions had been building in the area ever since Armenian refugees
flocked in after the 1894–1896 massacres. Many Cilician Muslims felt that the
newcomers were taking over agriculture and commerce, pushing them out.
The strain was greatest in springtime, when tens of thousands of mi grant
workers arrived for the harvest from other parts of eastern Anatolia.14 Around
the turn of the century, mechanization of agriculture was also reducing the
number of jobs available, intensifying the rivalry between Muslim and Arme-
nian seasonal workers and shaking social and po liti cal stability as a result.
It was under such circumstances that the Young Turks set up shop in 1908.
When the government dismantled Abdülhamid’s extensive monitoring and
censorship structure, it left a void in the public arena that was filled by hot-
heads on both sides. For some of Adana’s Armenians, hopes of autonomy and
in de pen dence were rekindled. For many local Muslims, including CUP del-
egates, this Armenian resurgence was seen as a threat and an affront to Muslim
primacy.
A series of mishandled incidents between Armenians and Muslims during
the counter- coup evolved into a full- blown clash in Adana city and its sub-
urbs from April 14 to 27, 1909. The disturbances culminated in a massacre,
with mobs attacking the Armenian neighborhoods. Army units sent to restore
order joined the fray on the Muslim side. On April 25, after shots were fired
at a military encampment, “a battalion attacked the Armenian school that
housed the injured from the first wave of the massacres. Soldiers poured ker-
osene on the school and set it on fire with people inside. Regular soldiers,
reserve soldiers, and mobs, along with Başıbozuks, attacked the Armenian
Quarter. They burne
d down churches and schools.”15 The army’s rampage
continued through April 27. When the soldiers and the mob were fi nally re-
strained, the Armenian quarter lay in ruins, as did houses elsewhere in the
city. By most accounts, more than 20,000 Armenians and 1,270 Assyrians
were murdered, leaving traumatized, impoverished communities.16
Although CUP representatives took part in the incitement and vio lence,
when the party regained power in Constantinople, it denied involvement and
saddled reactionary Hamidian ele ments with responsibility. Investigations and
trials followed; 124 Muslims and 7 Armenians were convicted and hanged.17
A More Turkish Empire
The international community was reminded, just a de cade after the mas-
sacres of the 1890s, of Turkish “barbarism.” But the events and their after-
math also strengthened the belief that the CUP’s hands were clean, that in
contrast to Abdülhamid its politics were liberal and pluralistic— that its at-
titude towards the Armenians would be diff er ent. Of course, the reinstated
CUP leaders would draw their own conclusions about the dangers of Armenian
nationalism, the zeal with which Muslims attacked their Christian neighbors,
and perhaps also their own ability to carry out such a large- scale massacre
without serious consequences. In this sense the massacre should be seen as an
impor tant milestone on the road to the genocide of the Great War years. But in
the moment, the Young Turks appeared to be striking a new po liti cal tone. If
they did not recognize Armenian equality, then at least they seemed to recog-
nize a right to exist in security. Hence the government’s acknowledgement of
the massacre and willingness to punish Muslim wrongdoers.
In early 1912, with the CUP now solidly in command, the Hunchaks and
Dashnaks reaffirmed their commitment to the empire’s territorial integrity.18
In return the CUP promised to promote reform in the east, the urgency of
which only increased with defeat in the Balkan Wars, renewing Christian fears
An Adana street after the 1909 massacre. The Armenian neighborhoods were almost
completely destroyed by a mob of Turkish civilians and soldiers.
The Young Turk s
of massacre and elevating Kurdish- Armenian tensions.19 But the Ottoman au-
thorities were not mollified by Armenian assurances and, as usual, reneged
on their reform proposals. By December 1913 Cemal Pasha was warning
Dashnak leader Vartkes Serengulian against pushing for Eu ro pean supervi-
sion of the proposed reforms, which was tantamount to rejecting them alto-
gether. Insisting on Eu ro pean intervention could result in the massacre of
hundreds of thousands of Armenians, Cemal reportedly said.20 The German
ambassador, Hans Freiherr von Wangenheim, took such threats seriously. In
a letter to Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann- Hollweg, Wangenheim wrote
that, under the Young Turks, “any previous inhibitions about harming the
empire’s Christians were fi nally gone.”21
Rus sian and German pressure eventually prevailed, and on February 8,
1914, the Ottomans assented to reforms. By agreement with Eu ro pean powers,
foreign inspectors would be on hand to oversee the implementation. The
Young Turks were not happy. In his memoirs Cemal claimed the empire went
to war later that year in part to bury the agreement.22 At the very least, the
agreement contributed to Turkish resentment toward Christians. The mis-
sionary Ralph Harlow could hardly escape it during his visit to the Ionian
coast that year. In one especially disconcerting passage, he describes depic-
tions of Christian atrocities on classroom walls in Turkish schools:
These pictures are often in brilliant colors and exhibit bloody and awful
massacres and outrage in which helpless Moslem women and children
and old men are being done to death and outraged by CHRISTIANS.
On the walls of a school for little girls for instance there hangs a lurid
scene in blood- red and white. Headless bodies lie around; hands, arms,
feet, from all of which blood streams. In the center stands a Christian
hacking an old man to death. On all of these pictures are words certain
to arouse bitter fanat i cism. . . . I pleaded with the hoja to remove these
pictures but he stamped his foot and said, “We will grind these enemies
under our feet.” Another scene is of an ex pec tant mother stripped
naked and her unborn child being torn from her side. . . . The hojas
told me that these damnable pictures were SENT THEM BY THE
GOVERNMENT TO PUT UP. Along with such pictures the children
A More Turkish Empire
are being taught the most fanatical poems . . . , all written to inspire . . .
hatred. It is well . . . and timely to ask what will the harvest be?23
The CUP leadership may have felt especially aggrieved, admixing guilt and
humiliation. Not only had the empire lost almost all of its remaining Eu ro-
pean domains on their watch, dashing hopes of revitalization, but many CUP
men themselves hailed from the Balkans and the Aegean and so took the
conflict with Christian minorities personally. Some CUP leaders were recent
refugees and many had lost family in the Balkan Wars. Almost all had lost
property and the landscapes of their youth.24 Talât Pasha, the power ful in-
terior minister from 1913 and chief architect of the 1915–1918 bout of
genocide, was a scion of a Bulgarian Muslim family from Thrace. War Min-
ister Enver Pasha’s father was Macedonian and his mother Albanian. Cemal
Pasha, the third member of the CUP triumvirate during World War I, was
born in Mitylene, Lesbos. The Balkan hurt counterbalanced the appeal
of imperial cosmopolitanism. “A casualty of the Balkan Wars,” Ronald Suny
writes, “was the ecumenical vision of the Ottomanists, the idea of a multina-
tional, religiously diverse empire of equal subjects. Even other Muslims, like
the Arabs, were not trustworthy.”25
But while not all Muslims were trustworthy in the eyes of the CUP, just
about anyone who was trustworthy was Muslim. Among top CUP officials,
Islam defined the bound aries of the nation. In this re spect, they were Islamists like Abdülhamid, not the secularists assumed in conventional history. Bahaettin
Şakır— a CUP founder, a member of its power ful central committee, and a Spe-
cial Organ ization chief during the Great War— saw the theological stakes
clearly: the strength of the Ottoman state was the “starting point for the sal-
vation of all Muslims,” he said. “If the poor Muslim nation does not awake
and care about its salvation, it will lose its reputation in this world. . . .
Possession and nation, religion and state are perishing. . . . Hurry up, O
Muslims, hurry up, heroes, sons of heroes; this is the day.”26
To men such as Şakır, the defense of the Muslim nation was ordained by
God a bloody affair. His colleague Gökalp welcomed the outbreak of World
War I in verse: “God’s will / sprang from the people / We proclaimed the
jihad / God is great.” Şakır specified one target of the holy war in 1906,
The Young Turk s
describing Armenians as “infidels who are enemies of Islam.” Their defeat
&n
bsp; would bring God’s glory to all Muslims. “In the name of God, the Most
Merciful, the Most Compassionate! . . . Let us make our nation prosperous
by taking our revenge! God is the Speaker of the Truth,” he wrote in a 1907
pamphlet.27
In November 1914, when the empire went to battle with the Great Powers,
it did so with the blessing of the Şeyhülislam, the chief Ottoman cleric. Mustafa
Hayri, who happened to be a member of the CUP central committee, issued
a fatwa proclaiming jihad against the Allies with the aim of persuading Mus-
lims worldwide that the war threatened the survival of Islam itself. The call
for holy war also reinforced religious fervor against Ottoman Christians.
Though the fatwa did not name internal Christian minorities, many Mus-
lims mentally lumped them together with Rus sia, Britain, and France. Wilfred
Post, a missionary and physician born and raised in Turkey, observed, “The
proclamation of the holy war, which failed to unite all Islam against the En-
tente, nevertheless had the effect of arousing the old fanatical spirit of the
Turks themselves and they prosecuted the holy war within their own Empire
with a zeal exceeding that of their forefathers.”28
Did Turks detect the irony of allying with Christian powers— Germany and
Austria- Hungary— for the preservation of Islam? We are not privy to the CUP
leadership’s secret discussions, so we cannot say. But their strategy is easily
enough understood when considering Rus sia’s support for the Christian mi-
norities, whose presence so threatened the CUP’s Islamist conception of the
nation. High on the party’s list of worries was the potential nexus of Rus sia,
the perennial enemy, and the Armenian revolutionaries who looked to it for
succor. The Young Turks fought both in the name of their religion.
Greek Removal
The Turkish government’s radicalism was evident in the statements of its
leaders and its rejection of Armenians’ gestures of good will. But it took time
to boil over into mass murder. Along the way, officials— including CUP leaders
and members of the sultan’s court— exercised their anti- Christian agenda
through the expulsion of Greek communities. During the bout of ethnic
