Armenians and the Cleansing of Muslims 1878–1915: Influences from the Balkans

Abstract

Armenian liberationists and revolutionaries since the end of the Russo-Ottoman War of 1878 looked to the Balkan model of political autonomy and independence as inspiration for crafting a liberation strategy for the Armenians in Eastern Anatolia. In spite of the fact that more pragmatic revolutionaries attempted to convince the Armenian community that the Balkan model would not work for the Armenians because of demographic and geopolitical differences, the Armenian struggle for independence from the Ottoman Empire was waged in a way that was similar to the Balkan model. There is strong reason to believe that if the Armenians had had stronger British and Russian backing and constituted a slightly higher percentage of the population in the region of Eastern Anatolia that an independent Armenia would have emerged in Eastern Anatolia and Cilicia much in the same manner that an independent Bulgaria, Serbia, and Montenegro emerged in the Balkans. Given this retrospective likelihood, the question of whether an Armenian state would have taken steps to cleanse the indigenous Muslim population much like many of the Christian populations in the Balkans did is relevant. This study explores the propensities exhibited in the Armenian community towards cleansing the Muslims over a period of 8 decades stretching from 1828 to1915.