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DID THE TURKS INVADE AND CONFISCATE ARMENIAN LANDS
STARTING WITH THE SELJUKS AND THE OTTOMANS?
The territory in which the
Armenians lived together for a time never was ruled by them
as an independent, sovereign state. This territory was ruled
by others from the earliest times from which there is evidence
that Armenians lived there. From 521 to 344 B.C. it was a
province of Persia. From 334 to 215 B.C. it was part of the
Macedonian Empire. From 215 to 190 B.C. it was controlled
by the Selephkites. From 190 until 220 A.D. it frequently
changed hands between the Roman Empire and the Parthians.
From 220 until the start of the fifth century it was a Sassanian
province, and from then until the seventh century it belonged
to Byzantium. From the seventh to the tenth centuries it was
controlled by the Arabs. It returned again to Byzantine rule
in the tenth century and, finally, it came under the domination
of the Turks starting in the eleventh century.
The Armenians living in this
territory who remained under the rule of these various empires,
could not continuously maintain any sort of independent or
unified Armenian state. At the most, a few Armenian noble
families dominated certain districts as feudal vassals of
the neighboring imperial suzerains, serving as buffers between
the powerful empires that surrounded them. Most of these Armenian
"principalities" were, thus, simply set up by local
Armenian nobles within their own feudal dominions, or by the
neighboring empires, who in this way secured their military
services against their enemies. The best example of this was
the Baghratid family, long brought forward by Armenian nationalist
historians as an example of their historic independent existence,
which was in fact put in charge of its territory by the Arab
Caliphs. Some of the "Armenian" families which assumed
the title of principality at this time were, moreover, really
Persian rather than Armenian in origin. That they did not
constitute any sort of independent nation is shown in the
statement of the Armenian historian Kevork Asian:
"The Armenians lived
as local notables. They had no feeling of national unity.
There were no political bonds or ties among them. Their only
attachments were to the neighboring notables. Thus whatever
national feelings they had were local.”
These Armenian principalities
existed for centuries under the control of various great empires
and states, often changing sides to secure maximum advantage,
and thus earning for Armenians often caustic and critical
remarks from contemporary historians, as for example the Roman
historian Tacitus, who in his Annalium liber wrote: "The
Armenians change their position relating to Rome and the Persian
Empire, sometimes supporting one and sometimes the other",
concluding that they are "a strange people.”
It was as a result of these
conditions, and then, the Armenians' lack of unity and strength,
their very failure to create a real state, their weakness
in relation to their neighbors, the fact that the territory
in which they lived was the scene of constant conflict among
their more powerful suzerains from all sides, that they often
were deported, or moved voluntarily, from the lands where
they first lived when they appeared in history. Thus when
they fled from the Persians they settled in the area ofKayseri,
in Central Anatolia. They were deported by the Sassanians
into central Iran, by the Arabs into Syria and the Arabian
Peninsula, by the Byzantines into Central Anatolia and to
Istanbul, Thrace, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Rumania, Hungary, Transylvania
and the Crimea. During the Crusades, they went to Cyprus,
Crete and Italy. In flight from the Mongols they settled in
Kazan and Astrakhan in Central Asia, and finally, they were
subsequently deported by the Russians from the Crimea and
the Caucasus into the interior of Russia. As a result of these
centuries-long deportations and migrations, then, the Armenians
were widely scattered from Sicily to India and from the Crimea
to Arabia, thus forming what they call "the Armenian
diaspora" centuries before they were deported by the
Ottomans in 1915.
The Armenians broke away from
the Byzantine church in 451,150 years after they accepted
Christianity, leading to long centuries of Armenian-Byzantine
clashes which went on until the Turks settled in Anatolia
starting in the late 11th century, with the Byzantines
working to wipe out the Armenians and eliminate the Armenian
principalities in order to maintain Greek Orthodoxy throughout
their dominions. Contemporary Armenian historians report in
great detail how the Byzantines deported Armenians as well
as using them against enemy forces in the vanguard of the
Byzantine armies. As a result of this, when the Seljuk Turks
started flooding into Anatolia starting in the late llth century,
they did not encounter any Armenian principalities; the only
force remaining to resist them was that of Byzantium. The
Seljuk ruler Alparslan captured the lands of the Armenian
Principality ofAni in 1064, but it had previously been brought
to an end by the Byzantine in 1045, nineteen years earlier,
with Greeks being brought in to replace the Armenians who
had been deported. It is therefore false to claim that the
Seljuk Turks destroyed any Armenian principality, let alone
a state. This already had been done by the Byzantines, and
it was in fact the social and economic ferment that resulted
which greatly facilitated the subsequent Turkish settlement.
Contemporary Armenian historians interpret this Turkish conquest
of Anatolia to have constituted their liberation from the
long centuries of Byzantine misrule and oppression. The Armenian
historian Asoghik thus reports that "Because of the Armenians'
enmity toward Byzantium, they welcomed the Turkish entry into
Anatolia and even helped them." The Armenian historian
Mathias of Edessa likewise relates that the Armenians rejoiced
and celebrated publicly when the Turks conquered his city,
Edessa (today's Urfa).
An Armenian principality did
arise in Cilicia starting in 1080 but it was the result, not
of the Turkish settlement in Anatolia, as has been claimed,
but, rather, of the Byzantine destruction of the last Armenian
principalities in eastern Anatolia, which caused a flood of
Armenians fleeing into Cilicia. This principality maintained
good relations with the Turks even as it provided assistance
to the Crusaders who passed through its territory on their
way to the Holy Land, while accepting the suzerainty, first
of Byzantium, and then after it declined, of the Crusader
Kingdoms, the Mongols, and, finally, the Catholic Lusignan
family which gained control of Cyprus. This sort of relationship
with "unbelievers^, however, displeased the Gregorian
Armenian Church, with the resulting internal divisions playing
a significant role in the Principality's conquest by the Mamluks
of Syria and Egypt in 1375. In the end, the most significant
consequence of this last Armenian principality was the establishment
of a separate Armenian church from the one centered at Echmiadzin,
which added to the internal divisions within Armenian Orthodoxy
which remain important to the present day.
Thus, when eastern Anatolia
was conquered by Fatih Mehmet II and Yavuz Sultan Selim I,
it was taken from the White Sheep Turkomans and from the Safavids
of Iran, who had occupied it after the Byzantines had retired;
while Yavuz Selim took Cilicia from the Mamluks. MIn no case,
therefore, did the Ottoman Turks conquer or occupy an existing
Armenian state or principality. In every case, these Armenians
had previously been conquered by peoples other than the Turks.
(*) ASLAN, Kevork, L'Armenie
et les Armeniens, Istanbul, 1914.
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