by Benny Morris
torturing [Christian] men, and shamefully ill- using the women” while
quartering gendarmes for free in the villages as they extracted exorbitant
taxes.116 In Kegi kaza, a sub- district jurisdiction, tax farmers reportedly went “so far as to hang up, head downwards, those who, from poverty,
cannot pay what is due.”117 The abuses continued through the summer. In
villages in the plain around Muş, “men are beaten” by gendarmes, “impris-
oned, human excrement rubbed in their faces; women and girls are in-
sulted and dishonoured, dragged naked from their beds at night; children
are not spared.”118
Little aid reached the survivors, in spite of Western missionaries’ and con-
suls’ attempts to provide relief. The authorities, who suspected that British
diplomats and American missionaries were working to promote Armenian
separatism, severely hampered the aid proj ect. Eventually, in what likely was
an effort to reduce contact even further, the Ottomans deci ded that all relief
would be handled by themselves rather than by foreigners.119
The news from Sason reverberated across the empire. Reporting from Van
nine months later, the British vice- consul wrote that “ matters have been
brought to a crisis by the Sassoun massacre” and that, if nothing would be
done, “similar scenes will be repeated in this province, and existence ren-
dered impossible to the Christian population.”120 In the Musa Dağ and Kesab
areas, news of the affair gave “ great impetus” to recruitment among the Ar-
menian revolutionary movements. “The argument that, unless they armed,
their wives and children would be butchered was used with great effect,” the
local British consul reported, “and men would part with every thing they had
The Massacres of 1894–1896
in order to obtain money enough to buy shot- guns and revolvers.”121 It is not
clear how widespread was this galvanizing effect.
Following Sason, the great powers did nothing except renew the diplomatic
pressure to implement reforms. Constantinople noted that its massacres had
come and gone without Western retribution.
Constantinople: The Turning Point
More than a year passed before the destruction of the Armenians resumed.
The second wave began in Constantinople, on September 30, 1895, and con-
tinued in a series of massacres around the eastern provinces. Events in the
capital, filtered through distorted news reports and official propaganda, en-
raged Muslims in the provinces and led directly to orders commanding the
slaughter of tens of thousands of Armenians.
What happened in Constantinople is fairly clear. On September 30, groups
of Armenians, at least partly or ga nized by Hunchaks and numbering between
500 and 2,000, assembled at Kumkapı, near the Armenian Patriarchate, and
advanced toward the grand vizier’s offices to voice their “grievances.”122 Ac-
cording to Currie, the demonstrators “ were armed with pistols and knives of
an [ sic] uniform pattern” implying that organizers had distributed the
weapons.123 The demonstrators, described in one report as “mostly young
men of the middle class,” carried a petition railing against “the pres ent state
of affairs in our country.” The petition protested “systematic persecution . . .
with the one object of causing the Armenians to dis appear from their own
country,” “innumerable po liti cal arrests,” “barbarous and inhuman tortures,”
“and the iniquitous exactions of the officials and tax- gatherers.” Citing “the
massacre in Sassoun,” the Armenians demanded reform in the eastern
provinces and a curb on Kurdish brigandage.124
Currie was not convinced of the group’s civil- minded goals. He believed
that the Hunchak aim was to provoke “bloodshed,” which would induce for-
eign intervention. Many of the demonstrators apparently “took the Sacra-
ment in the vari ous Armenian churches on the preceding Sunday in order
to be prepared for death,” he wrote.125 The patriarch was also alarmed and
tried unsuccessfully to stop the demonstration.
The petition and demonstration plan were submitted to the Sublime Porte
two days before the gathering, so no one was caught off guard. But when the
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II
day came, the demonstrators were blocked by police near Sultan Mahmud’s
tomb and told to disperse. After shots rang out—it is unclear who fired
first— the demonstrators ran off with police giving chase. According to in for-
mants working for the American minister between fifteen and fifty people
were killed, “the Turks suffering as much as the Armenians.” The Ottoman
minister of police said the Armenians initiated the clash when an Armenian
drew a knife on a battalion commander “who tried to parlay with them.” The
French ambassador reported that the Armenians killed a policeman.126
Sparked by the clash, Turks swarmed the downtown streets and attacked
Armenian passersby. Many of the assaults were carried out by softas armed
with clubs. Policemen either looked on or took part. The “repression was mer-
ciless,” the French ambassador reported. Westerners witnessed gendarmes
holding down and then shooting an Armenian, clubbing to death two others,
and bayoneting nine prisoners.127 A Turkish cavass (ceremonial guard) assigned to the British consulate saw four Armenians “bayoneted in cold blood” in
the courtyard of the Ministry of Police.128
Muslim clerics played a prominent role in the assaults. French Ambassador
Paul Cambon reported that immediately after the clash at the Sublime Porte,
“a multitude of mollahs . . . gathered on the Hagia Sophia square to deliberate
the attitude to be taken.”129 At least some of them deci ded to join in. They
went about the streets “arresting people, threatening and mistreating the ones
they met.”130 Ginning up their fellow Muslims, they “paraded through the
city” a coffin allegedly containing the body of an Ottoman officer slain by
Armenians.131
The following day several Armenians were killed “with sticks and stones”
by “the Turkish rabble.”132 One missionary reported seeing “a number of
softas on the streets who looked very savage and who I observed had revolvers
under their long gowns.” Missionary employees reported witnessing arrested
Armenians beaten to death by mobs of softas and other Turks.133
On the night of October 1, and into the early morning of October 2, iso-
lated and sporadic attacks gave way to a full- scale pogrom. Cambon spoke of
“passions . . . unchained.”134 A number of caravanserai (known in Turkish as
hans and in Persian as khans) inhabited by Armenians were attacked, with
police connivance or participation.135 In one case, twenty- five Armenian la-
borers were “butchered” by assailants carry ing “sticks and knives.” Fifty more
The Massacres of 1894–1896
were murdered in another. Two Armenians were killed near a Protestant
school. Seven were killed in Scutari (Üsküdar), on the Asian side of the Bos-
porus. Con temporary reports indicate that a total of about eighty Armenians
were killed and 800–1,000 imprisoned. According to Terrell, th
e mobs were
largely composed of armed softas and “fanatical Moslem priests.”136
Some Armenians fought back: in at least one case, they attacked a police
post.137 Many others preferred to stay away from the melee and took refuge
in churches around the city.138 A missionary remarked that “ women have not
been molested in any case, even in cases where the mob broke into and robbed
houses.” As night turned to day, Terrell found the streets empty apart from
patrolling soldiers and “turbaned ulemas.”139
The authorities appear to have paid the rioters, after the event if not be-
fore. A softa who murdered an Armenian told a shop keeper who witnessed
the killing that “he used the money received from the imperial bounty on this
occasion to complete his theological library.” Rewards could be considerable.
A Turkish newspaper, Sabah, reported on October 5 that the government had just given the madrassas around Sultan Beyezid Mosque “11 sheep and a
sufficient amount of the Imperial bounty.”140 An American missionary re-
ported, “Many persons . . . believe” that “police agents disguised as softas”
had carried out the pogrom. If true, this would “imply that the authorities
had long before prepared the softa garb for hundreds of police agents
knowing that the odium of their deeds would thereby fall upon the softa
class.”141 But, according to most reports, there were genuine softas among
the rioters.
After the two days of unhampered vio lence, the government, under pres-
sure from the Christian ambassadors, arrested sixty softas and deployed guards
around the Armenian quarter.142 But the tension was only deepening. An Oc-
tober 8 report describes softas patrolling Constantinople’s streets “in un-
usual force.”143 On the 14th a British businessman reported that a number of
Armenians were murdered. Hunchaks were forcing Armenians to keep their
shops closed— “to prolong the excitement,” according to one report.144 Terrell
believed that the Armenians were acting under “ orders” from the “revolu-
tionary leaders, whose vengeance they dread if they disobey,” while the Mus-
lims, he wrote, “pretend to see in [store closures] a demonstration to arouse
sympathy among Christian nations.” But Armenian be hav ior was prob ably
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II
not, or not only, a function of revolutionist pressure. As one observer noted,
in Pera, they “sought refuge in the churches, owing to Mussulman threats.”145
On October 21, to appease the great powers, the government announced
a series of reforms. The Constantinople killings provided the urgency, but the
sultan’s irâde (imperial decree) was in fact a belated response to the Sason massacre and the resulting inquiry. The reforms were hammered out in negotiations between the ambassadors of Britain, France, and Rus sia and the
Sublime Porte and were communicated to the valis of Erzeurum, Van, Bitlis,
Diyarbekir, Mamuret- ül- Aziz, and Sivas— the six eastern provinces, with
large concentrations of Armenians. According to the decree, Christian
muavins (aides) would be appointed to assist local governors. Christians
would be allowed to join the police and gendarmes, in proportion to the
size of their communities. There were also regulations designed to curb
Kurdish depredations.146
But the sultan and his bureaucracy had no intention of implementing the
reforms. The previous November, the sultan had made his position crystal
clear in a talk with the German ambassador, Prince Hugo von Radolin. Ab-
dülhamid “solemnly swore that under no circumstances would he yield to the
unjust Armenian pressure, and that he would rather die than introduce
far- reaching reforms in Armenia,” Radolin reported to Berlin.147 Terrell con-
sidered the irâde largely meaningless: the steps prescribed were not made
public, and, in practice, the Ottomans failed “to embrace the radical mea sures
so emphatically demanded by” the great powers. Although the irâde “re-
stored confidence” among some of the Armenians and Western diplomats
who knew of it, Terrell’s “own conviction is that [calm] will be only tempo-
rary. Permanent security and order . . . are made impossible by the rancor of
race and religious hatred, now more bitter than ever.” He particularly blamed
the scheming of “Armenian anarchists, who will never rest while certain of
the sympathy of the Christian world” and “ will continue to foment strife.”148
What ever the culpability of Armenian revolutionaries, the brunt of the
damage would be felt in the provinces, where the in de pen dence movement was
weakest. In Trabzon, the first provincial massacre site in the wake of the riots,
“the excitement of the Turks was . . . greatly increased on hearing of matters in Constantinople.” They “seemed to infer that all the Armenians were banded
together and in armed rebellion against the government,” as one missionary put
The Massacres of 1894–1896
it.149 Trabzon had long been on tenterhooks; events in the capital merely in-
tensified existing resentments. In December 1894 Longworth, the local
British consul, warned vali Kadri Bey of the Muslims’ “ bitter feeling.” Though
such sentiments were “dormant,” Longworth was concerned by talk of a
future “massacre . . . of infidels” as Muslims reacted to “wild and loose re-
ports of Armenian atrocities committed on Muslims in the interior.”150
The East Ignites
Immediately following the Constantinople pogrom, orders went out to offi-
cials in the eastern provinces to or ga nize anti- Armenian massacres. This, at
least, was the view of most leading Western diplomats in Turkey. While un-
able to obtain copies of these orders, the diplomats were convinced by the
“uniform methods and system” employed in each outbreak. Such consis-
tency implied that the vio lence was “directed by some central authority which
had powers to enforce its desires.” Terrell wasn’t sure whether it was the
sultan himself who had given the orders or whether the command came from
what he called “the Mohammedan priesthood,” but he had no doubt that the
call had come from on high.151 Cambon was a rare dissenter, suggesting that
there might be a split between the government and the perpetrators. To his
mind, the government at least appeared to be trying to stop the killings.152
Such confusions are understandable, given how the authorities labored to
cover their tracks. Postal and telegraph officials often “lost” tele grams and letters sent by diplomatic agents and missionaries, or else postponed their
delivery, the better to muddy the waters of culpability and prevent informa-
tion from spilling out of affected areas. Henry D. Barnham, a British consul,
wrote from Aleppo in November 1895:
The authorities . . . have withheld the delivery of the post from Urfa,
Aintab and Marash. Special messengers bearing letters addressed to
myself and to the American Vice- Consul have been arrested and im-
prisoned, and my letters restored to me after so long a delay, and in
such a condition . . . [as to] warrant the belief that they had been
opened. Friends at the vari ous Missions, apprised of these facts,
and
unwilling to expose their messengers to ill- treatment, are deterred from
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II
writing frequently. Tele grams received by private individuals are value-
less, as they are subject to the Censure, and nothing [is] allowed to pass
which has not the approval of the Government.153
For weeks after the massacres, diplomats in Istanbul were at a loss to un-
derstand how the orders had been transmitted to the provinces. One British
diplomat initially suggested that the “chief instigators of the massacres” were
not the Ottoman rulers but rather “spies of the Palace.”154 In time, however,
evidence pointed to the Sublime Porte itself: the orders had reached valis,
mutesarrifs, and military and gendarmerie commanders from the highest
echelons. One British vice- consul, Charles Hampson, quoted a Muş Muslim
notable: “ After the disorders in Constantinople, instructions were received
from above to massacre and to put the blame on the Armenians, and natu-
rally these instructions were followed.” Hampson said he could “vouch for
the accuracy of the . . . remarks.”155 He subsequently reported hearing from
a “generally . . . trustworthy” Armenian that the sultan had sent a circular tele-gram “to the authorities of the vari ous districts” stating, “The seven Powers
are pressing me to execute their wishes in regard to the Arm. question. Such
a course would be most prejudicial to our Empire; &, sooner than adopt it,
Turkey must shed every drop of the blood of her soldiers. Be ready, there-
fore, &, on receiving my order, put every Arm. to the sword.” Hampson was
hesitant to believe that precisely these words had been sent, but he was con-
vinced that “some such order” had been received by the mutesarrif of Muş
before the massacres.156
In late 1896 another British diplomat, Fitzmaurice, offered a watered- down
variant of this explanation: in the wake of the events in Constantinople, the
Sublime Porte had triggered the massacres by sending “cypher” tele grams to
the provinces. “The Porte . . . , either willingly or unwillingly misinformed, telegraphed the first garbled accounts” of what had happened. “This, becoming
known through the officials to the Mussulman population, tends to poison and