The founding of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF) in 1890 was a selfless response by a group of men and women to the oppressive socioeconomic and political conditions that afflicted the Armenian population of the Ottoman Turkish Empire.
The history of the ARF during this early period (1890 to 1923) reads like a romantic novel. However, this was not fiction. As fedayee, they challenged the rapaciousness of the Turkish and Kurdish overlords who ruled the interior of Anatolia or the government-sponsored pogroms that were responsible for the murder of tens of thousands of Armenians. As political leaders, at times working with the Young Turks, they sought to introduce constitutional reforms to ameliorate the socioeconomic condition of the ethnic minorities within the empire. The incentive for the ARF was to lessen the oppressive burden of Ottoman-Turkish rule on the Armenians. For the Young Turks or Ittihadists, at least initially, the purpose was to maintain a multi-ethnic empire from disintegrating. And in the diplomatic arena, the ARF represented the interests of the Armenian people vis-a-vis the international power brokers such as England and France.
The Treaty of Lausanne, which was signed on July 24, 1923 by the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Japan, Greece, Romania, the Serb-Croat-Slovene State, and Turkey, ignored the interests of the Armenian people and sealed the fate of the Armenian nation. Hai Tahd (Armenian Cause) is the Dashnaktsutiun Manifesto of these injustices that have afflicted the Armenian people and their nation since 1915.
Injustice number one: the genocide
The genocide of the Armenian population of Anatolia by the Ottoman-Turkish government represents the bedrock of Hai Tahd. The determined attempt to annihilate the Armenian nation is the proximate cause of the injustices represented by Hai Tahd. Before this genocide of a nation was completed, over two million Armenians were uprooted from their homes in lands that had been continuously occupied centuries before the Turkish tribes entered the region from central Asia. From 1915-23, Turkish barbarity put to death some 1.5 million men, women, and children, effectively emptying the historic Armenian provinces in Anatolia of their rightful inhabitants.
Injustice number two: the confiscation of real and personal property
The depopulation of the Armenian settlements throughout Anatolia resulted in a massive shift of wealth from the innocent victims of the genocide to the newly recognized Turkish state (Treaty of Lausanne, 1923) and its people. Included were productive farmlands, orchards, and vineyards with their implements and farm animals; homes; businesses; inventories of goods, raw materials, and personal effects; community-held property; and religious and educational structures and lands. This confiscated wealth was never fully inventoried nor was its value calculated either in 1915 or now.
Injustice number three: the loss of Wilsonian Armenia
The Treaty of Sevres (Aug. 10, 1920) established a free and independent Armenia based on U.S. President Woodrow Wilson’s Arbitral Award. The nascent independent republic of Armenia established following the victory over Turkish forces at Sadarabad (May 1918) was beset with overwhelming social, economic, and political problems. Although Sultan Mehmet VI (Muhammad VI) had capitulated at Mudros (Oct. 30, 1918) to the United Kingdom representing the allies, Kemal Ataturk, operating from the interior city of Ankara, blamed the government for losing the empire. His nationalistic message resonated with the military as he set about to reclaim Anatolia from the Greek, French, and Italian spheres of interest established by the allies. If allowed to stand, coupled with a free Armenia occupying eastern Anatolia, only the central region from Ankara north to the Black Sea would have remained under direct Turkish control. During the time between the treaties of Sevres and Lausanne, Ataturk reclaimed all of Anatolia for the Turks. Forced to accept this new reality, the principal allied powers (the United Kingdom and France), intent on preserving their own interests within the greater Near East (present-day Middle East), framed the Treaty of Lausanne, which superseded the Treaty of Sevres. Turkey was recognized as a sovereign state within its present borders, the Armenian Genocide was ignored, and President Wilson’s free and independent Armenia was forgotten.
Injustice number four: destruction of Armenian cultural artifacts
Not content with annihilating the Armenian nation, the succession of Turkish governments from Ataturk to current Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan adopted a policy that denies the genocide and eliminates all traces of Armenian occupation and development of Anatolia centuries before a Turkic political entity was established. Armenian cultural artifacts were purposely destroyed, allowed to fall into ruin, pillaged by the local population for building materials, or used for purposes for which they were never intended. Especially was this true of religious structures and ancient cemeteries with their beautiful hand-carved khatchkars. Place names were changed and the cultural landscape of settled areas deliberately altered.
Injustice number five: unilateral confiscation of historic Armenian lands
In August 1920, the Armenian nation was still traumatized by the murder of 1.5 million of its people. The attendant destruction of the social, economic, and political framework of the nation was almost complete. Independent Armenia was in no position to forcefully represent its justifiable claims expressed in the Treaty of Sevres or to challenge the Kemalists who were allowed free reign, especially by the United Kingdom, to reassert Turkish control over all of Anatolia. The French were in control of Syria (including present-day Lebanon) and the adjoining Turkish district of Alexandrette (Iskenderun) and, having nothing further to gain, colluded with Ataturk and withdrew their forces from the Cilician region leaving the Armenians defenseless. Events subsequent to the subversion of the first independent Republic of Armenia (May 28, 1918 to Nov. 29, 1920) by the Russian Bolsheviks and their Armenian sympathizers involved the loss of additional historic Armenian territories. With the Treaty of Moscow (March 1921), the newly formed Socialist Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan was awarded Armenian Artsakh and Nakhitchevan. A few months later (July 1921), the Bolsheviks placed Javakhk under Georgian jurisdiction. And in an attempt to foster better relations with Ataturk’s Turkey, the Russian Bolsheviks ceded the Kars-Ardahan region to Turkey in the Treaty of Kars (October 1921). What remained of the Bolshevik Armenian Republic was the core area centered on Yerevan and Gyumri.
Injustice number six: the issue of Artsakh
Our brothers and sisters in Karabagh (part of historic Armenian Artsakh) were forced to live for some seven decades under a hostile Turkic-Azeri government. The perverted policies of the Bolsheviks continually thwarted the Karabagh Armenian petitions to rejoin Armenia. Finally, in 1989, the Armenians declared their independence from Azerbaijan in accordance with the recognized principles of self-determination and remedial secession. The response to this declaration was a full-scale attack by the Azeri military forces. The Karabagh Armenians, supported by the Republic of Armenia and ARF volunteers, successfully defended their declared independence and were able to liberate significant areas of historic Artsakh. For the past 17 years (the 1994 ceasefire officially ended the war), the Artsakh Armenians have enjoyed de facto independence. However, their right to de jure independence hangs in the balance against Turkish and Azerbaijani attempts to frame the issue simply as an unprovoked attack by Armenia on a neighbor’s territorial integrity or Armenian irredentism.
Injustice number seven: the forced acculturation of the ‘Javakhayer’
Javakhk (Georgian Samtskhe-Javakheti) is an historic Armenian land that was placed under the jurisdiction of neighboring Georgia in 1921 by the Russian Bolsheviks. The region occupies a strategic location along the border with Turkey; the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline passes through the district. An indication of the Tbilisi government’s determination to acculturate the Armenians was the following comment by Georgian Foreign Minister Grigol Vashadze in an October 2010 interview during a visit to Armenia: “I don’t know what Javakhk is; there is no Javakhk region on the map.”
Through resettlement projects, the government seeks to reduce the Armenian majorities within the region’s districts. Infrastructural development (roads, electricity) receives less emphasis than other regions of the country. The closure in 2007 of the Russian military base at Akhalkalaki where many Armenians were employed increased their already high unemployment rate within the region. Manufacturing is non-existent and agriculture needs significant inputs of technology and marketing infrastructure to rise above its present subsistence level. The government continues its pernicious assault on the cultural fabric of the people: their language, church, education, public gatherings, and means of mass communication. Employment opportunities are purposely limited and participation in the political process hampered. The United States turns a blind eye to these obvious transgressions against the Armenians while it continues to portray Georgia as a beacon of democracy in the South Caucasus.
Part II will suggest setting new priorities for a new agenda that shifts the emphasis to objectives that are more immediate and significant with respect to Hai Tahd, to the ARF, and to the Armenian nation.
Michael Mensoian
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whooo, all these ‘injustices’ done to us. Makes me want to put my head down on a pillow and not wake up.
Do you mean the establishment and activities of Armenian Revolutionary Federation led to all these ‘injustices’. That’s certainly the impression from the flow of your article.
All these ‘injustices’ done to us by other evil people and we took them like children.
We make for good victims. Actually, that’s the narrative, the narrative of victim-hood, is what is perpetuated by the contemporary Armenian establishment in the US and some of the other Diaspora communities. They keep feeding the people this narrative so they can continue to hold on to power in established institutions.
You want new priorities, a new agenda? Change the narrative that keeps people in their victim status and come up with a new one to help our nation survive and prosper in today’s world, and to propel our people to new achievements, and not keep them in subservient, victim status.