Creating a Modern "Zone of Genocide": The Impact of Nation- and State-Formation on Eastern Anatolia, 1878-1923

Abstract

The persistence of or near-genocidal incidents from 1890s through 1990s, committed by Ottoman and successor Turkish and Iraqi states against Armenian, Kurdish, Assyrian, and Pontic Greek communities in Eastern Anatolia, is striking. This article traces origins of these incidents by examining emerging Armenian, Turkish, and Kurdish national movements and their competition for region's resources. It argues that creation of this zone of genocide in Eastern Anatolia cannot be understood in isolation, but only in light of role played by Great Powers in emergence of a Western-led international system. This article examines patterns of and ethnic hostility in Eastern Anatolia from late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries. This region has been described as a geographic unit of some 120,000 square miles.1 Its core is a largely steppe-like mountain plateau, with Lake Van and Mount Ararat its most significant physical features. To north it is bounded by Black Sea after a dramatic descent via Pontus range; Caucasus mountains provide a natural barrier in northeast. To south, it falls away in a series of steep, parallel folds descending along headwaters of Tigris and Euphrates, to Jazira, great SyrianMesopotamian plain. Eastern Anatolia consists of six Ottoman administrative vilayets that most concerned European powers in late nineteenth century due to the Armenian Question, as well as vilayet of Trabzon and a substantial part of Mosul. This would embrace historic western Armenia, with exception of Cilicia, but not eastern Armenia (and thus modern independent republic of that name). It would also include northern and central core of Kurdistan, some of which today lies in northern Iraq. Eastern Anatolia is our focus because it is at once an arena in which competing national interests have laid claim to its territory and assets, and a geographic region that since 1890s has been repeatedly plagued by genocidal killings. Within