InternationalRemembering the tragedy of Cilicia 100 years later
Published: Saturday April 18, 2009
A memorial to the Battle of Hajin in Nor Hajin, Armenia. Tatul Hakobyan / Armenian Reporter
Yerevan - Official Turkish historiography, when it attempts to deny the fact of the Armenian Genocide, presents three fundamental justifications. First, it was war - and a world war at that - and in that process not only Armenians, but also Turks fell victim. Second, Armenians were organizing volunteer units and were fighting among the ranks of Russian forces against the Ottoman Empire. Third, Armenian revolutionaries sought to carve an independent Armenia out of the Ottoman state.
Though none of these circumstances, even taken at face value, would justify mass murder, what explanation is available for the Armenian massacres in Cilicia in 1909? What war was there in 1909? What volunteer units? And finally, Armenian revolutionaries were cooperating with the Union and Progress Party, which was in power.
The declaration of the Ottoman Constitution in 1908 by the Young Turks and its slogans of freedom, justice, and equality were greeted with joy and hope for the future by the Christians in the Ottoman Empire, especially by the Armenians, who during the reign of Abdülhamit II, and primarily in 1894-96, were subjected to massacres. The massacres in April of 1909 in Cilicia quickly dissipated those hopes.
The Union and Progress Party temporarily lost control just before the first wave of massacres, on April 14-18. But the Unionist forces, sent to quell the massacres, joined in a second wave of killings on April 25-27.
The reasons for the Armenian massacres, according to some researchers are several. Armenians in Cilicia were financially better off than the Turks and Kurds, and resentment was a sentiment the organizers of the massacres were able to exploit. The resentment was enhanced by the fact that after a long history of subjugation, Armenians were being treated as equals in the new, constitutional regime.
Exactly one century has passed since those days, when on the banks of the Mediterranean (where in the Middle Ages, for 300 years the Armenian state of Cilicia flourished) the massacre of the Armenians took place, which are better known as the Adana massacres or by the name the Tragedy of Cilicia. Almost 30,000 Armenians were killed; 7,883 children were orphaned; 4,072 women became widows and close to 30,000 people became homeless. In the end, 32 Armenian churches, 19 schools, 2,923 homes and 593 stores were looted and burned to the ground.
