Probably to a large degree as a result of these conditions, an ideology of Pan-Turkism, or Turanism, became dominant, its aim to enhance the power of the Ottoman Empire and to purify the nation, making it Turkish in language, customs, and religion. The Young Turks abandoned the alliance with England in response to political and material support from Germany. In the hope of regaining lost territories or conquering new ones, the Ottoman Empire entered the First World War on the side of Germany. Immediately, it suffered heavy losses to a massive Russian invasion. Although it also won a victory over the British at Gallipoli, the possibility of its losing the war at this early point was real.
Before the war, poverty, hunger, disease, an influx of refugees from lost territories and their conflicts with minorities added to life problems. The loss of provinces in Europe caused substantial migration of Muslims into Turkey, especially Anatolia. After the war of 1877-78 more than a million people moved into Turkey.5 There was conflict between the newly arriving Muslims and Armenians living in the territories that they had moved into. After the revolution strife between Armenians and Young Turks further contributed to political instability and violence.
The people experienced much hardship. Agricultural methods were primitive, and the yield was poor. Peasants had difficulty paying their taxes and lived in many areas in houses without sanitation, “without hope or ambition.”6 The peasants had feudal obligations to landlords and were forced to serve in the army, where they were poorly fed, rarely paid, and kept in active service beyond the legal period.7 Cholera epidemics continued until the end of the century.8 Eighteen percent of the Muslim population in Anatolia died during World War I, from starvation and disease as well as fighting. Two-thirds of the dead were civilians.9
These were the circumstances in which the genocide of the Armenians began in 1915. The loss of power, prestige, and influence as a nation and the tremendous life problems within Turkey had to result in powerful feelings of frustration and threat in both the people and the leaders and to give rise to the needs and motives that lead a group to turn against a subgroup of society.
Cultural preconditions
The devaluation of minorities and Christians. Devaluation of the Armenians had several sources. First, the Ottomans devalued and mistreated all their subject peoples. According to Toynbee, the concept of rajah (cattle) was applied to them.10 In 1922 the Encyclopedia Britannica described the status of non-Muslims in Turkey the following way:
The non-Mussulman subjects of the Sultan had indeed early been reduced to such a condition of servitude that the idea of their being placed on a footing of equality with their Mussulman rulers seemed unthinkable. Preserved merely as taxpayers necessary to supply the funds for the maintenance of the dominant and military class, according to a foreign observer in 1571, they had been so degraded and oppressed that they dared not look a Turk in the face. Their only value was from a fiscal point of view, and in times of fanaticism or when anti-foreign sentiment ran high even this was held of little account, so that more than once they very nearly became the victims of a general and state-ordered massacre.11
Although this statement may have been affected by the genocide of the Armenians, earlier sources are consistent with it.
Subject status and religion coincided. The treatment of non-Muslims was based on the Koran and Ottoman culture. The Koran has many passages prescribing the correct relationship between Muslims and “infidels.” The legal rights of Dimmis (non-Muslims) were restricted. A Dimmi was allowed to give testimony in court, but the testimony was not weighted as heavily as a Muslim’s. When the two testimonies conflicted, the Dimmi’s was disregarded.12 A Muslim who killed a Dimmi would not receive a death penalty; a Dimmi who killed a Muslim would. A male Dimmi could not marry a female Muslim, but a male Muslim could marry a female Dimmi. For a long time Christians were forbidden to own guns or ride horses; the possession of a gun was a serious crime.13 They had to pay extra taxes and board migratory Kurdsmen, who beat their hosts, raped their daughters, and looted their property.14 The Armenians in particular were constant prey. At international conferences they repeatedly requested protection from the violence of Kurds and Circassians.
Religious and cultural devaluation of Christian minorities was thus maintained and strengthened by discrimination and constant mistreatment. After the Balkan wars the Armenians were the only large Christian minority left, a potential target for scapegoating and violence.
Orientation to authority. The Ottoman regime was theocratic. Islam ruled the masses, whose deep respect for authority had a partly religious basis. The sultan was both a worldly and a spiritual leader.15 The society was still feudal and hierarchical. In 1896 Muray Bey, expressing the views of the Young Turks, held that the population’s crime was blind obedience to authorities, although obedience in general is a virtue.16 In the Young Turk revolution, officers of the army gained the support of common soldiers partly because of unquestioning military obedience and partly by claiming that the sultan was in the hands of bad advisors.17
The Ottoman Empire was a monolithic society in which Islam and the Ottoman Turkish values, culture, and power structure held sway. Despite the many ethnic groups and religions, true pluralism did not exist. In 1856-57, a committee of Armenians attempted to redefine the Armenians’ rights and responsibilities. Ottoman authorities rejected this and rewrote the Armenian constitution so that it reaffirmed subservience; for example, the election of the Armenian patriarch and of political and religious councils had to be approved by
