Was Armenians really the oppressed ones? Let's look what British Foreign Office says about it

As usual modus operandi of Dashnak Armenians for demonizing Turks, they claim that Ottoman Armenians were living in miserable conditions while Turks were not and they were greatly oppressed by Ottomans, while Turks were not.

Even their terminology is intended for demonizing Turks, since Ottoman Empire, though ruled by a Turkish sovereign, was not administered by ethnic Turks but mostly by Devshirmes (Converts, i.e. non-Moslem and non-Turks, who assumed Islam and capable of reading and writing assumed administrative positions in the State.) The number of ethnic Turks was next to nothing.

These Devshirmes not only favored their old coreligionists (i.e. Christians and other non-Moslems) but also greatly oppresed Turks by imposing heavy taxes on them, ignoring them in terms of education, training only remembering them when a war is present.

The text clearly indicates that the Mohemmedans (i.e. Moslem Turks) were not represented in the central government by stating that:

"2. The Mohammedan population is absolutely "unrepresented," at the central, irresponsible, and dissevered Government of Constantinople, where the Mohammedan subjects of the Sultan have really no one to whom they can make known their interests or expose their wrongs. Meanwhile the Christians have at the capital and throughout the Empire as many Courts of Appeal and redress- demanding representatives as there are Consulates, Agencies, and, sometimes, Embassies, at hand. Indeed, not only are their complaints listened to when made, but even fabricated for them when not made."

Despite the claimed genocide took place during 1915 under Ottoman Rule whose general staff was a German General, whose government consisted of non-Moslems and Devshirmes, in a place which many Western Allies (?) and Friends (?) of Turkey calls Kurdish Region, Turks of modern Republic of Turkey, which was established in 1923, was responsible for that.

This is not only a full blown demonization and discrimination campaign against Turks but also a very strange spatial and temporal distortion too.

Before excerpting entire correspondence between Consul Palgrave and Lord Stanley, I would like to give some highlights about the text:

Consul Palgrave after referring to disturbances between Armenians and Turks and attributing such disturbances to explicit support of Armenian population for seditious and rebellious movements and hostile power, states that:

"However, in every single recorded case of abusive language and reciprocal insult, I found that Government punishment had fallen much more severely on the Mahommedan offenders than on the Christian."

Consul Palgrave after mentioning about the causes of grievances as "some rival or interested Christian who had made a tool of the Ottoman Administration to injure his brother Christians.", says that:

"2. Cases in which weakness or maladministration in high places, injured Christians and Mohammedans alike, but more frequently the latter than the former; for reasons to be stated further on, religious or fanatical motives had nothing to do with it."

He also indicates that it's not Christians but Turks that Ottoman Governments actually oppresses or at least overburdens, by reporting:

"1. At the present moment, the whole burden of military service, active and reserve, falls exclusively on the Mohammedan population. The Christians do indeed pay into the public Treasury a small-a trifling sum, bearing no real proportion soever to the advantages it obtains them for their exemption; but, even were the "Bedel Askeri," or Ransom Service Tax, weighty enough to balance the effective value of such exemption to the Christians, it could never equipoise the misery which it entails on their Mohammedan fellow-subjects by the enormous burden of the conscription thus thrown on their unassisted shoulders."

After this prelude, please read yourself.

Enjoy and let the truth be told.


                                      No More Discrimination.


British Documents on Ottoman Armenians Volume I

No 23

 

Consul Palgrave to Lord Stanley

(Extract.)                                                                     TREBIZOND,
January 30, 1868.
                                                                        (Received February 21.)

I HAVE the honour to forward herewith a Report relating to the respective position of Christians and Mohammedans in Anatolia.

Inclosure in No. 23

Report on the Relative Position of Christian and Mohammedan Subjects in the Eastern Provinces of the Ottoman Empire.

DURING my visit at Erzeroom and its adjacent districts of Kars and Ardahan, at Amasia, Chorum, and Yuzgat, places reported the strongholds of Turkish fanaticism; at Sivas, Kaisareeyah, and Kastemouni, towns in the very heart of the interior; in a word, everywhere on my way, I made, and caused to be made, minute inquiries regarding their alleged grievances from the Christians themselves, Greek, Armenian, Protestant, and Catholic.

The result was that not a single grievance, not a single allegation of real weight, as regards the point in question, or which, on examination, did not resolve itself into mere exaggerated generalities, was brought before me.

The cases came under two categories-that of personal insult, and that of judicial injustice.

Regarding the first category, or that of personal insult, it was to be observed:

That, where differences of religion exist, it can hardly be expected that the masses of religionists, especially those of the lower orders, should always abstain from mutual ill-manners. Nor can Turks, in particular, be expected to feel much love for those who, though themselves Ottoman subjects, yet openly parade their sympathy for avowed rebels and for hostile powers, but in such event it is not precise the Turks who can be held responsible.

However, in every single recorded case of abusive language and reciprocal insult, I found that Government punishment had fallen much more severely on the Mahommedan offenders than on the Christian.

Cases of open violence and bodily hurt were specified in the very badly administered district of Kaisareeyah, and there only. The victims were some Mohammedans and some Christians; the cause, not fanaticism or religious hatred, but the weakness of the local Government, seconded by the inefficiency of the zaptiehs, or police, who were led by the scantiness of their pay to connive at disorder, sometimes to take share in it; and, if Christians appeared to have been occasionally singled out for assault rather than Mohammedans, it was that their cowardice and their wealth rendered them fitter objects for such treatment.

In what regarded judicial injustice, I found that category subdivided as follows:

1. Cases in which the instigator and real oppressor was some rival or interested Christian who had made a tool of the Ottoman Administration to injure his brother Christians. Thus, for instance, the Christian villages of Ak-Dagh, in the Vilayet of Angora, have been ruined by the infamous usurer.... ,himself an Armenian Christian of Yuzgat. His tools were...., since made Governor of Koniah, and other Turkish officials, gained over by Armenian bribes.

2. Cases in which weakness or maladministration in high places, injured Christians and Mohammedans alike, but more frequently the latter than the former; for reasons to be stated further on, religious or fanatical motives had nothing to do with it.

Something might here be said regarding the only Turkish Tribunal in which Christian witness is formally and officially non-admitted when given against Mohammedans. I mean the "Mahkemah," or Ecclesiastical Court. None complain more bitterly than do the Turkish officials themselves of the "imperium in imperio" exercised over them through this very Tribunal by the Sheikh-ul-Islam and the Mollahs and Kadees under him. Its inconveniences can, however, in most cases be, in a round-about way, remedied by reference and appeal to the Civil Tribunals; and it is to be hoped that Turkey will, in time, be able to take, with regard to her Ecclesiastical courts, those steps which, even in Europe, have been a matter of time and difficulty; but the proposed reorganisation of the "Mahkemah" belongs to another section of this Report.

Now let us turn the question, and view it from the other side.

1. At the present moment, the whole burden of military service, active and reserve, falls exclusively on the Mohammedan population. The Christians do indeed pay into the public Treasury a small-a trifling sum, bearing no real proportion soever to the advantages it obtains them for their exemption; but, even were the "Bedel Askeri," or Ransom Service Tax, weighty enough to balance the effective value of such exemption to the Christians, it could never equipoise the misery which it entails on their Mohammedan fellow-subjects by the enormous burden of the conscription thus thrown on their unassisted shoulders.

And this, be it well noticed, not vice nor any other book-fancied cause is the true reason why the Mohammedan population proportionately decreases, the Christian increases. The whole "unproductive" element of the Empire is formed out of the former alone. It is a crying injustice, and calls for serious consideration and prompt remedy.

2. The Mohammedan population is absolutely "unrepresented," at the central, irresponsible, and dissevered Government of Constantinople, where the Mohammedan subjects of the Sultan have really no one to whom they can make known their interests or expose their wrongs. Meanwhile the Christians have at the capital and throughout the Empire as many Courts of Appeal and redress- demanding representatives as there are Consulates, Agencies, and, sometimes, Embassies, at hand. Indeed, not only are their complaints listened to when made, but even fabricated for them when not made.

Hence, and it is a deadly consequence, the full weight, firstly, of fiscal oppression so natural to a Government at once centralized and absolute like the Ottoman; and, secondly, the chief weight of local and individual oppression, unavoidable where a weak yet unbalanced power resident at the capital neglects, as it is sure to do, the provinces, falls on the Mohammedan and not on the Christian population. For the very reason that the cry of the former is, practically, unheard, the latter have a thousand spokesmen.

3. And this is a corollary of the above-open sedition and abominable crimes severely and speedily punished when perpetrated by Manometers are only half punished, or are even pardoned altogether when Christians are the culprits; the hands of justice being for them tied up by Consular or analogous intervention.

The subject might be still further investigated, and instances given in illustration; but thus much must suffice for the main. I will only add that a striking and visible confirmation of what has now been stated is afforded not on the coasts only, but in the centremost interior, the very supposed focus of Mohammedan fanaticism, by the manner in which the Christians of those districts flaunt their ostentatious wealth in splendid houses, gay dresses, and all the ornament of prosperity-a manner wholly incompatible with anything of that oppression so much talked of for them at a distance. Among the Mohammedan population these conditions are sadly reversed.

It is a mistake, though not an infrequent one, to attribute the evident prosperity of the Christians in Turkey by comparison with the Manometers to some greater energy on their part, industry, and other virtues. Truth is, that in vigor, in probity, and in steady work the Manometers are, as a rule, decidedly ahead of their Greek and Armenian fellow-countrymen. But the former have been, and are, systematically overburdened, not to say oppressed; while the latter, under protection of their advantageous position in the Ottoman Empire, have been enriching themselves for the last half century mainly by questionable speculation, or by direct fraud and usury.

Nor can the Ottoman Empire right itself till its burdens are equally distributed on its two shoulders, the Mohammedan and the Christian, not exclusively heaped up on the former as they now are. Either the Christians must be put on a level with the Mohammedans by being brought down to them, or, much better, the Mohammedans must be brought up to a level with the Christians by a conscription lightened because shared, and by an equable administration, combined with some attention to the interests of the provinces, and of a loyal and hard-working, not merely of an intriguing and money-jobbing, population.

As matters now stand, the Ottoman Government lies under the very serious charge of oppressing its Mohammedan in favour of its Christian subjects. I regret to have to confirm the charge.

Such are the observations suggested to me on a somewhat threadbare topic by what I have in person seen and heard during my visits to the inlands.

Turkey No. 16 (1877), pp 1-3, No I/I

British Documents on Ottoman Armenians

Although, in a pathetic attempt to demonize Turks, Dashnak Armenians are creating many doctored documents and making ungrounded claims, the British consular / diplomatic correspondence clearly indicates what happened between Armenians and Turks. Was it really Turks who oppressed and tormented Armenians or was it someone else (like Kurds)? Who protected Armenians from those someone else and how Armenians, being instigated by Russian revolutionists, paid for the protection extended to them?

Was Turks really demented and thirsty for blood, after living side by side for a millenium, they started killing Armenians out of blue? Or did something else happen?

Anyway please download four volumes of British Documents on Ottoman Armenians and see for yourself.

British Documents on Ottoman Armenians Volume I

British Documents on Ottoman Armenians Volume II

British Documents on Ottoman Armenians Volume III

British Documents on Ottoman Armenians Volume IV

Enjoy and let the truth be told