I. Betrayal of the Fedayeen

As debates raged in the homeland, in the Diaspora instead of attempting an admittedly hugely difficult enterprise of developing a nationwide military-political strategy, the ARF leadership embarked on an overhaul of ANLM perspectives on entirely different foundations. It launched its fateful project of collaboration and coalition with the reactionary nationalist Young Turk movement that it then helped to bring to power in the so-called 1908 ‘Constitutional Revolution’.

This was to mark the end of the ARF’s role as a revolutionary force in Ottoman-occupied Armenian life. In its collaboration with the Young Turks the ARF was to act as the representative not of the Armenian people, nation or peasantry but of the Armenian elites. The ARF-Young Turk coalition proved in its essence to be a collaboration not of the Armenian and Turkish people but their two bourgeois elites at the expense of all the oppressed and exploited. It was a coalition for which the Armenian people and indeed the elites too were to pay a heavy price.

The Young Turks were not a democratic or popular revolutionary force. They did not represent or fight for the common people of the Ottoman Empire, Turkish or otherwise. Based in large part among Macedonian contingents of the Ottoman army’s officer class they were a military-nationalist movement serving an aggressive Turkish bourgeois and landlord class. Wielding influence within the military and security forces they acted first and foremost to secure for the Turkish ruling class an unchallenged primacy and right to exploit and profit across the Empire and at the expense of all other nations and peoples.

For the Armenian peasant the 1908 Young Turk military coup, despite all the Diaspora Armenian applause, altered nothing of the fundamental character of the Ottoman Empire. The so-called ‘Revolution’ that so enthused the urban middle classes was to make no difference to the Armenian peasantry. Virtually none of the vast swathes of stolen Armenian lands or property were returned and there was no let-up in anti-Armenian terror that was driving tens of thousands into exile. For the peasantry the Young Turk was that same unreconstructed military and political official of the Sultan’s Empire, only dressed in the latest fashion. Neither peasant nor artisan had any interest in an alliance with the Young Turks who were class enemies of all irrespective of nationality or religion. And to Armenians they were both class and national enemies.

Among Armenians the Istanbul-Smyrna-Trabzon elites as well as tiny segments of the better off homeland communities were the only ones who invested and had any possible interest in any form of joint enterprise with the Young Turks. Confronted with the strident challenge of Turkish nationalist elites, possessing no firm foundation in the Diaspora these elites were existentially rootless and impotent. Their only chance to temper the Turkish challenge was either European intervention in Ottoman affairs that had for Armenians proved worse than wishful thinking, or a compromise arrangement with their local Turkish opponents. Here the ARF’s projected coalition with the Young Turks held out a certain hope for the elite.

But the Fedayeen remained a decisive impediment, a deadly thorn in the side of any ARF-Young Turk enterprise. Seeking primacy for the newly developing Turkish bourgeois-capitalist class the Young Turks would determinedly oppose any armed working class or peasant force, let alone an Armenian one that would readily fight on behalf of all non-Armenian peasants too! An armed peasantry would not readily bend to continued exploitation, oppression and expropriation from any class of capitalists or landlords, Turkish or otherwise.

Yet, investing baseless elite hopes in an ARF-Young Turk coalition, determined to offer the Young Turks a helping hand to Ottoman state power, the ARF proceeded with the dismantling of the ANLM’s armed wing.

Relying on and exploiting the Fedayeen’s absolute loyalty to the ANLM, the ARF leadership, especially after the failure of the 1904 Sasun resistance, moved with ruthless speed to neutralize the Fedayeen and subordinate them to its collaborationist design. Despite prolonged resistance Armenian Sasun was defeated with calamitous consequences. In the aftermath, the region was virtually emptied of its Armenian population and new Turkish military garrisons were built – and that with Armenian labour and materials. The defeat heralded the final end of Sasun’s centuries old autonomy. A victim was the revolutionary figure of Hrair who fell in battle.

Immediately following these setbacks Antranig was forced to ‘give way to (Van’s) Armenian dignitaries, to pressure from political activist Goms (Vahan Papazian, 1876-1973, a leading ARF activist) and to the demands of foreign ambassadors.’ In the autumn of 1904 against his will Antranig and his fighters left for Persia. Three years on at the ARF’s 1907 Fourth General Congress in Vienna proceedings were marked by acute hostilities between the Fedayeen and the ARF leadership charged with failing the movement’s armed forces. Antranig attended on behalf of the Fedayeen substituting for Gevorg Chavoush. Urging the former to remain firm, a letter from Chavoush gave vent to guerrilla bitterness against the Diaspora-based leadership. It had failed to send ‘money or armaments’ to Mush and Sassoon. This ‘caused the people to curse’ the leadership. (Simonian 1996, p288)

At the Congress Antranig laid enormous stress on questions of armed organization and weapon procurements. Alerting the congress to the danger of imminent destruction of Armenian communities he urged undertaking immediate measures to prepare for national insurrection. What in normal circumstances would ‘take four years we have to do in one’ he argued (Simonian 1996, p295-300). Among other reasons Antranig referred to the emigration that was ‘draining the land of 50,000 people a year’ and so undermining the foundations of Armenian communities. ‘The Movement’ reports Antranig calling for ‘removing the reigns of leadership from the (ARF) Bureau officials, from amateurs’ and ‘passing them to the military revolutionary forces’ ‘working in the Homeland (Simonian 1996, p305).’

Antranig was ignored and side-lined. In Simonian’s account of the congress one gets a whiff of the leadership’s patronizing haughtiness suggesting that Antranig and the Fedayeen were incapable of appreciating the finer points of politics. With Antranig forced into exile and Hrair also dead, the 1907 death of Gevorg Chavoush marked the symbolic end of an Armenian peasant revolutionary force. Now the ‘ARF leadership’ writes Simonian ‘sent Aram Manoukian from the Caucuses into Vasbourakan.’ (Simonian 1996, p227)

Thereafter the field was left to the ‘politicians’ with a free hand to do with the movement as they wished. Following the 1908 Young Turk seizure of power the ARF completed its task of burying the Fedayeen. Doing so, it betrayed the Armenian peasantry and people whose immediate and long-term interests demanded revolutionary struggle and armed defense against the Ottoman state and its ruling classes.

To correctly measure the scale of the betrayal it’s worth noting that it coincided with a major revival of the ANLM, one so powerful that it seemed to spark an almost global ruling elite opposition! Besides Rouben’s assessment of Armenian military capabilities in the 1904-1908 period (Rouben, 1973, p160), the Tsarist regime regarding the anti-Ottoman Armenian revolution with equal horror collaborated directly with the Turkish state slaughtering scores of Armenian fighters in 1904 (Simonian 1996, p205-217). During this same span European Embassies, the Armenian Church and the Armenian political leadership too, then in deep negotiation with the Young Turks, all seemed to be driven by one overriding aim: to remove the guerrillas from Daron, from Mush-Sassoon. ‘Antranig must leave’ appeared to be their call.

Through the years of growing ARF-Young Turk negotiation Antranig, though forced into exile, acted as something of a consistent peasant opposition. Unlike the ARF leadership he understood that the Young Turk movement was an irreconcilable enemy. Following the 1908 ARF-YT pact he turned down offers of a seat in the new Ottoman ‘parliament’:

‘Go ahead and enjoy their company’ he told the ARF leadership. ‘But be careful of these new comrades of yours’. In ‘the not too distant future they will have your heads and those of the people too. A vast trap is being laid, be careful (Simonian 1996, p321-322).’

With delusions in the imperial-nationalist Young Turks the ARF paid no heed to sound advice. Indeed its prostration before the Young Turks had no limit. Its press even started peddling the Ottoman myth of an ideal Armenian life in the Empire until the Russo-Turkish war of 1876-7 (Simonian 2009, p266-267). A full account of the ARF-Young Turk relationship will reveal a reality more sordid than can be imagined!

When in 1913 the ARF was compelled to recognize the disaster that was its alliance with the Young Turks instead of turning to revive an independent, self-reliant policy of military-political resistance in the homelands, in tune with the Armenian bourgeois, middle class and establishment forces it resorted once more to useless appeals to Europe and Russia that had so cynically used and betrayed the Armenian people.

II. 1915

It was none other than a senior ARF figure, Garo Sassouni, who in 1930 highlighted the disastrous consequences of the ARF’s disarming of the ANLM’s peasant-guerrilla forces. In his ‘A Critical Look at the 1915 Genocide’ he writes that faced with a foe whose ‘fundamental aim was to resolve the Armenian question by massacring the people’ (Sassouni 1965, p40) the critical challenge for the ANLM was the preparation and organization of nation-wide armed resistance. Acceptance of, and subservience to prevailing state power** **was not only ‘senseless’ it ‘served to facilitate the massacre’.

More crucially still ‘mere passive self-defense was a delusion…’ With Young Turk power intent on a genocidal policy:

‘…decisive and bold insurrection was the only form of self-defense, insurrection from Van right across to Cilicia.’ (Sassouni 1965, p43)

How else were the Armenian people to resist the might of the Ottoman Empire as it set out to uproot an entire people from its historic homelands? Coordinated nationwide armed insurrection was no idle or irresponsible proposal. By the turn of the 20th century armed self-defense was a firmly established tradition in the Armenian homelands. Moreover from 1914 Ottoman forces would be stretched to the limit by demands of world war. But the ARF-Young Turk pact removed all possibility of resistance and uprising.

By 1915 Sassouni writes, among Armenians:

‘The psychology of insurrection was absent. There was no plan or organization for insurrection. Neither the Armenian people nor the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF) were ready to undertake such a task.’ (Sassouni 1965, p43)

Even when from 1913 onwards the ARF ‘turned its attention to Armenian self-defense…the effort… was tiny compared to the requirements and the dangers (Sassouni 1965, p31-32).’

Shamelessly ignoring the ARF’s role in bringing the Young Turks to power and its subsequent demobilizing of Armenian revolutionary forces, Garo Sassouni wheels out countless excuses to wash away the ARF’s abandonment of its revolutionary responsibilities. The ARF he implies was not the force that fashioned the times but a hapless victim of these. It ‘marched along with the confused mentality of the times (Sassouni 1965, p39). ‘For the sake of Armenian unity and collective strength’ the ARF remained ‘wary of publicly raising the flag of revolutionary organization and self-defense (Sassouni 1965, p42) and so ‘adopted a moderate stance.’

The reality of course was that the ARF took all the strategic decisions and actions that determined the political character of ‘the times’ and it did so independently and with a mind to a compromise with the Young Turks. It was the unchallenged leading Armenian force that in coalition with the Young Turks helped bring about the military coup grotesquely described as a ‘Constitutional Revolution’. The ARF consciously and willingly joined the new Turkish bourgeois-military establishment as one of its important components. But it entered the corridors of power only as a powerless guest.

ARF policy across the 1908-1913 years – especially the dismantling of the Fedayeen and its support of Armenians enlisting the imperialist, plundering Ottoman army. By doing so the ARF leadership accepted and gave legitimacy to the Ottoman state and the Young Turks and so undermined other revolutionary opposition.

As the largest and most respected trend within the ANLM the ARF’s endorsement and enthusiastic support for this fraudulent ‘revolution’ contributed substantially to the then prevailing illusion in Diaspora Armenian communities, but not in the homelands, that Armenian ambitions were about to be realized. Thus did the ARF act as the major catalyst and direct agent for the disarming of the military organization of the Armenian peasantry and common people.

In his critical analysis significantly Sassouni does not consider the views of people such as Antranig who in tune with the interests of the peasantry and Armenian homeland communities rejected collaboration with the Young Turks.

The ARF’s betrayal of the peasant-Fedayeen movement, its search for compromise with a Turkish bourgeois-military class represented by the Young Turks cost all classes of Armenian society dearly. Ironically the 1915 catastrophe destroyed not just the homeland peasants and artisans but the privileged elites in the Istanbul and Smyrna Diaspora too who were suffocated and removed from what became the Republic of Turkey.

It does not do to speculate. But it is appropriate to acknowledge Garo Sassouni’s evaluation that in 1915 where there was resistance proportionately many more Armenians survived the Young Turk onslaught.

If the Ottoman-Young Turk state was responsible for this Genocide, the ruling Armenian elites through the ARF-ANLM leadership who disarmed the Armenian peasantry’s defense forces were directly responsible for the absence of nationwide resistance that could have altered the destiny of Armenia and its common people.

If there are any lessons to be learned from the 1915 Genocide, the central one is that the Armenian masses, the common people, the lower orders can never leave their destiny in the hands of their elites or in the hands of movements, such as the ARF, that do not commit themselves exclusively to the defense of the common people.

Footnotes:

Note 1: Rouben was a leading ARF figure. His memoirs despite hints of self-serving apologia, despite disapproval of an independent Fedayeen movement and signs of unpleasant disdain for Antranig offers still an excellent insight into the Fedayeen movement and its relation to the travails of rural Armenian communities battling for survival.

Sources

Levon Chormissian, 1974, ‘Overview of a Century of Western Armenian History’, Volume 2, 576pp, BeirutRouben,** 1972** ‘Memoirs of an Armenian Revolutionary’, Volume 1, 403pp, BeirutRouben,** 1973**, ‘Memoirs of an Armenian Revolutionary’, Volume 2, 1973, 328pp, BeirutRouben,** 1974**, ‘Memoirs of an Armenian Revolutionary’, Volume 3, 1974, 373pp, BeirutGaro Sassouni,** 1965** ‘A critical look at the 1915 Genocide’, 64pp, BeirutHrachig Simonian,1996, ‘Antranig and His Times’, Volume 1, 752pp, Yerevan

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Eddie Arnavoudian holds degrees in history and politics from Manchester, England, and is Groong’s commentator-in-residence on Armenian literature. His works on literary and political issues have also appeared in Harach in Paris, Nairi in Beirut and Open Letter in Los Angeles.