Latest / The Story of Armenia: Survival Through Empires and Genocide — Fexingo History / The Massacres of Hamidian Era and Armenian Resistance
Transcript
- Lucas: We've talked a lot about the Armenian Genocide of 1915, and the battles that followed in 1918. But the violence didn't start with the Young Turks. A generation earlier, under Sultan Abdul Hamid II, the Ottoman Empire saw a wave of massacres that killed maybe a quarter of a million Armenians. Luna: The Hamidian massacres, right? I've heard the name, but I don't know much beyond that. Lucas: Exactly. From 1894 to 1896, Abdul Hamid—who was paranoid about losing the empire's remaining territory—decided to crack down hard on Armenian demands for reform. These reforms had actually been promised in the Treaty of Berlin back in 1878, but the sultan never implemented them. Lucas: Instead, he created a paramilitary force called the Hamidiye—mostly Kurdish cavalry regiments, armed and given free rein to attack Armenian villages. The idea was to keep the Armenians in line through terror, and it worked brutally. Luna: So the state deliberately armed Kurdish tribes to massacre Armenians? Lucas: That's exactly what happened. The first major incident was in the Sassoun region, south of Lake Van, in 1894. Armenian villagers had refused to pay extra taxes to Kurdish chieftains, and the Ottoman military intervened on the Kurds' side. Hundreds of villages were burned, thousands killed. Lucas: Word got out, and European consuls investigated. Their reports were appalling—mass graves, mutilated bodies, entire regions depopulated. But the great powers, Britain, France, Russia, did almost nothing. They issued protests, but no one wanted to risk a war over the Armenian question. Luna: And this is when the Armenian revolutionary parties started forming, isn't it? Lucas: Yes. The Hunchakian party—socialist, revolutionary—had been founded in Geneva in 1887. And the Dashnaktsutyun, the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, formed in Tiflis in 1890. They believed that only armed resistance would force the Ottomans and the Europeans to pay attention. Lucas: In 1895, the Hunchaks organized a massive demonstration in Constantinople, the Babl-i Ali protest. They presented a reform petition to the Sublime Porte. The Ottoman police attacked the crowd, killing hundreds, and that sparked a wave of massacres across Anatolia. Luna: So the protest just made things worse. Lucas: Tragically, yes. In the following months, massacres spread from Trabzon on the Black Sea down to Diyarbakir and Urfa. In Urfa alone, thousands were killed inside the cathedral where they'd taken refuge. The British ambassador reported that the violence seemed coordinated, often starting with the Hamidiye and then spreading to the local Muslim population. Luna: Was there any Armenian resistance that actually worked? Lucas: The most famous event is the occupation of the Ottoman Bank in Constantinople in August 1896. A group of 28 Dashnak fedayee, armed with pistols and bombs, stormed the bank and took hostages. They demanded European intervention for Armenian reforms. Lucas: The siege lasted about 14 hours. The Ottoman police and soldiers surrounded the bank but couldn't break in. Finally, the Russian embassy negotiated a safe passage for the fedayee to leave on a French ship to Marseilles. It was a propaganda victory, but it also triggered another wave of massacres, this time in the capital itself. Luna: So the backlash was immediate. Lucas: Yes. For three days, mobs attacked Armenian neighborhoods in Constantinople. Thousands were killed, and the Hamidiye were involved again. The European ambassadors protested, but again, no military intervention. Lucas: One interesting figure in all this is the British statesman William Gladstone, who had been a vocal supporter of Armenian reforms. He published a pamphlet called 'The Armenian Question' in 1895, condemning Abdul Hamid as 'the Great Assassin.' But by then, Gladstone was out of office, and his moral outrage didn't translate into action. Luna: It sounds like the pattern of inaction that repeated in 1915. Lucas: Exactly. The Hamidian massacres were a dry run for the genocide. The same tactics—deportations, massacres, denial—were used, and the world mostly looked away. Abdul Hamid was eventually deposed in 1909 by the Young Turks, but the machinery of destruction remained in place. Lucas: There's also a lesser-known rebellion in the town of Zeytun, in Cilicia, in 1895. The Armenians there actually held out for months against Ottoman forces, and the European consuls negotiated a ceasefire. But that was the exception. Luna: Did any of the Hamidiye commanders face consequences? Lucas: Hardly any. A few local officials were dismissed, but the Hamidiye continued to exist until the Young Turk revolution. Some of those Kurdish chieftains later played roles in the genocide as well. Luna: It's hard to hear about a century of massacres without feeling like nothing ever changed. Lucas: That's why knowing these details matters. The Hamidian massacres are often forgotten, overshadowed by the genocide. But they shaped the Armenian revolutionary movement and the political landscape of the Ottoman Empire. Without understanding 1894-96, you can't fully understand 1915. Lucas: One of the most haunting documents from that period is a letter from an American missionary in Mush, describing how the Hamidiye rode into villages and gave families a choice: convert to Islam or die. Many chose death. Luna: And the international community knew and did nothing. Lucas: Right. The massacres were covered in The New York Times, The Times of London, but without political will, it was just reporting. The Armenians were essentially abandoned. Lucas: If today was actually useful to you, the way these stay ad-free is listener support—buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Just mentioning it because we want to keep digging into these stories without interruption. Luna: Yeah, and it really helps. Even a small contribution keeps us going. Lucas: Alright, back to the Hamidian era. One of the most tragic postscripts is the massacre at Adana in 1909, just a year after the Young Turk revolution. That was a different context—the counterrevolution of April 31—but it showed that the violence wasn't over. Luna: So even after Abdul Hamid was gone, the pattern continued. Lucas: Exactly. The Adana massacre killed about 20,000 Armenians, and the new Young Turk government initially blamed the Armenians for starting it. The same denials. It was a preview of 1915. Lucas: I think that's what makes the Hamidian massacres so important to remember. They show that the genocide didn't come out of nowhere. It was the culmination of decades of escalating violence, with the full knowledge of the great powers who chose not to act. Luna: So when we talk about the Armenian Genocide, we have to see it as the climax of a longer history. Lucas: Exactly. And that's what we'll keep exploring in future episodes. Thanks for coming with us.