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World War I Root Of Mideast Conflict, Armenian
Genocide
Agence France Presse – 20/2/2014
ISTANBUL - A century on, World War I casts a haunting shadow far from the
trenches of western Europe, having spawned two crises that still strain
international relations: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Armenian
genocide.
When Ottoman Sultan Mehmed V declared "holy war" on Britain, France and
Russia on November 24, 1914, his five-century-old empire was already in
decline and had lost most of its European territory.
Convinced that Germany, an ally, was destined for a speedy victory, the
empire's governing "Young Turks" movement saw the war as a chance to
consolidate its grip on power, block the economic rise of London and Paris,
and reclaim central Asia.
The Ottoman army inflicted a brutal defeat on British and French forces on
the strategic Gallipoli peninsula during the Dardanelles campaign in 1915,
but its war turned into a nightmare on the eastern front against Russia.
Tens of thousands of soldiers died in battles that drew in Armenian
fighters who fought alongside Russian troops in a bid to cast off Ottoman
rule.
- An inhuman act Defeated by Russia in Armenia and the Caucasus, the Ottomans responded by
attacking the Armenian minority in their midst.
"There are two alternatives: either the Armenians will liquidate the Turks,
or the Turks will liquidate them," an Ottoman official, Mehmed Resid, wrote
in his memoirs.
"Faced with the need to choose, I did not hesitate long. Before they do
away with us, we will get rid of them."
The arrest and massacre of 2,000 Armenian leaders in Istanbul on April 24,
1915 began what is described as the first genocide of the 20th century -although modern-day Turkey categorically refutes the term.
In less than a year, hundreds of thousands were forcibly displaced, their
possessions seized and many of them killed.
A century on, the mass killings continue to fuel a bitter controversy,
regularly upsetting relations between Turkey and the West.
Armenians, backed by many historians and a growing number of foreign
parliaments, say up to 1.5 million of their kin were systematically killed
in the dying days of the Ottoman Empire.
Turkey admits large scale massacres took place, but says they were
perpetrated in self-defence against the Russian threat. Overall it says
500,000 died in fighting and of starvation.
The Armenian academic Rouben Safrastian rejects the Turkish arguments.
"Massacres of Armenians took place well before World War I,", he argues.
"The war was simply a good excuse to carry out a criminal plan."
"For us the question is just as painful as it was 100 years ago," said the
vice-president of the Armenian national assembly, Eduard Sharmazanov.
"Turkey needs to end its policy of denial and apologise to the Armenian
people."
There have been gradual signs of change in Turkey, with Foreign Minister
Ahmet Davutoglu last year calling the events of 1915-16 a "mistake" and an
"inhuman act" during a trip to the Armenian capital, Yerevan.
"In recent years there have been commemorations in Turkey, university
conferences. It's a small revolution," said Turkish analyst Burcu Gultekin
Punsmann.
"A pretty deep process of revision is underway in Turkish society, even if
it is not yet obvious at the political level."
- Conflict in the Middle East World War I also redrew the map of the entire Middle East, sowing the seeds
of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
In 1916, Ottoman forces, led by German generals, quickly gained the upper
hand over British troops in Palestine and Mesopotamia, an area that covers
modern-day Iraq, Kuwait and parts of Syria.
But British forces proved highly adept at mobile warfare in the desert, one
of the few places where fighting on horseback was still possible.
They were assisted by the actions of T.E. Lawrence, the fabled British
archaeologist who rallied Arab nationalists in revolt against Turkish rule
and sultans.
His hit-and-run attacks on Turkish supply lines were a marginal part of the
campaign, but the legend of "Lawrence of Arabia" had dramatic propaganda
value, and his writings on insurgency tactics remain highly influential.
By 1917, the British had turned the tide of the campaign, taking Baghdad
and Jerusalem. By the following year, Allied forces had occupied Damascus
and Beirut and had effective control over the entire region.
The Arabs that supported them had bought into promises from Britain and
France that they would win independence after the war, but they were to be
bitterly disappointed.
Behind the scenes, Britain and France had already carved up the region
between themselves under the Sykes-Picot Agreement of May 1916: Libya and
Syria to France; Jordan, Palestine and Iraq to the British.
Adding to the confusion, and cutting across their agreements with both the
French and the Arabs, the British had also announced the infamous Balfour
Doctrine in 1917, in which foreign secretary Arthur Balfour had promised a
homeland for Jewish people in Palestine. The doctrine formed the basis for
the creation of the Israeli state three decades later, and a conflict that
continues to tear apart the region to this day.
The armistice signed at Mudros in Greece on October 30, 1918, marked the
final dissolution and dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire. Five centuries
of imperial rule was at an end.
But the fighting was not over for Turkey, which spent another four years in
a war of reconquest to regain lost lands in Anatolia, particularly against
the Greeks. It was these battles that allowed Mustafa Kemal, who would
later become Ataturk, to lay the foundations of modern-day Turkey.