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Honour and Shame The Diaries of a Unioni
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8
Honour and Shame: The Diaries of a
Unionist and the ‘Armenian Question’
1
Ozan Ozavci
On the morning of 8 March 1909, Mehmed Cavid Bey (1877–1926), a leading member of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) and a deputy in the new Ottoman parliament, received two telegrams from Salonika. The first informed him that his wife, Saniye Hanım, had arrived safely in the city. The second brought good news about her long struggle with tuberculosis. Her doctors were saying that her health was now improving. When Cavid received a third telegram later in the evening, asking him to go to Salonika urgently, he understood that something was wrong. He received the bad news at the Istanbul station, just before he boarded the evening train. With the shock and grief at his wife’s sudden death, perhaps because he sought consolation in writing, that evening he started to keep a diary. 2 The first pages of the diary suggest that Cavid Bey was seeking emotional relief. He complained about his loneliness, the absence of his friends to console him and the insincerity of the consolation messages. But as his political career rose rapidly after that sad day, the content of his diaries changed. They came to consist of his first- hand observations of the political, economic and financial affairs of the Ottoman Empire. Writing on an almost daily basis, he used the diaries mostly as a practical reminder for his own work, but often he noted his feelings and made personal remarks about the significant occurrences of his time – including the Armenian genocide of 1915.
1 The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP/2007–2013)/ ERC Grant Agreement n. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Margaret L. Anderson, Hans–Lukas Kieser, Khatchig Mouradian and Maurus Reinkowski for reading and making comments on various versions of this chapter, which significantly improved it. Needless to say, the responsibility for any errors, factual or otherwise, is mine. 2 Hüseyin Cahit Yalçın, ‘Meşrutiyet Devrine Ait Cavit Bey’in Hatıraları’, Tanin 1 (30 August 1943); diary entry for 8 March 1909, Tanin 1 (30 August 1943).
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3 W. S. Churchill, The World Crisis, 1911–1918, vol. 2 (London: Odhams Press Limited, 1939), p. 436. 4 Richard F. Crawford to L. N. Guillemard, 16 May 1909, the National Archives in London (hereafter, TNA), FO 800/79; Aykut Kansu, Politics in Post-Revolutionary Turkey, 1908– 1913 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2000), p. 150; Nazmi Eroğlu, İttihatçıların Ünlü Maliye Nazırı Cavid Bey (Istanbul: Ötüken Yayınları, 2008); Polat Tunçer, İttihatçı Cavid Bey (Istanbul: Yeditepe Yayınları, 2010). 5 Gerard Lowther to Sir Edward Grey, 28 June 1909, TNA, FO 371/777/451. 6 Lewis Einstein to Secretary of State, 15 July 1909, National Archives and Records Administration 20784/1095.
Once described by Winston Churchill as a ‘skilful and incorruptible’ man, Cavid was widely known among Western diplomats as the most capable man of finance in the CUP. 3 He was also the first Unionist to hold a cabinet position, as minister of finance, in summer 1909, and was assigned the same post in 1913 and 1917. All along, he introduced important financial reforms, secured large external loans and made huge efforts on behalf of the Unionist struggle against opposition groups to control political power. 4 When he became Ottoman minister of finance for the first time on 27 June 1909, Sir Gerard Lowther, the British ambassador to Istanbul, wrote:
[C]avid belongs to the sect of Salonican Crypto-Jews known to the Turks as ‘deunmeh’ [dönme], which have in great part supplied the brain- power of the new movement in Turkey, and has all the financial talents of his race. Before becoming deputy he was a professor in the Salonican School of Arts and Crafts. He is exceedingly quick and intelligent, an exceptionally good orator and debater, genial, liberal- minded, and probably the most popular of the Young Turks who have come to the fore. He is, perhaps naturally, somewhat intolerant of the slow- minded methods of the real Turks, and has, in consequence, incurred their resentment to a certain degree, especially in the matter of the drastic retrenchments of which he has been the warm advocate; but, on the whole, Young Turkey is to be distinctly congratulated on his appointment, as indeed is [C]avid to be congratulated for his courage in accepting what is probably the most arduous and responsible post in Turkey. As regards his political leanings, he is pro-British, and is no great lover of German methods in Turkey. 5
According to Lewis Einstein, the American chargé d’affaires in Istanbul, Cavid was a man ‘of no mean talent, whose financial capacities are for the moment undisputed’, and ‘his influence is just now very considerable’. 6 The young Ottoman minister of finance was arguably an economic and political liberal and a firm defender of Ottomanism, that is, the peaceful
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11 See n. 9, above. 12 For an exemplary study that refers to emotional states in analysing genocide, see Uğur Ü. Üngor, The Making of Modern Turkey: Nation and State in Eastern Anatolia, 1913– (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). 13 Jeff Goodwin, James M. Jasper and Francesca Polletta, ‘Introduction: Why Emotions Matter’, in Jeff Goodwin, James M. Jasper and Francesca Polletta (eds), Passionate Politics: Emotions and Social Movements (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), p. 13; Reinhard Wolf, ‘Der “emotional turn” in den IB: Plädoyer für eine theoretische Überwindung methodischer Engführung’, Zeitschrift für Außen- und Sicherheitspolitik 5, no. 4 (2012): 605. 14 Deborah Gould, ‘Concluding Thoughts’, Contemporary European History 23, no. 4 (November 2014): 639––40. 15 Theodore Kemper, ‘Status, Power and Felicity’, in J. Sets and J. Turner (eds), Handbook of the Sociology of Emotions, vol. 2 (Dordrecht: n., 2014), pp. 155–6.
although other important elements remained that have long gone largely unnoticed, especially on the so- called Armenian Reform Question of 1912–14. In the 1990s, the Turkish Historical Association took possession of the diaries, and in 2014 and 2015, thanks to the diligent work of Hasan Babacan and Servet Avşar, it published a complete transcription of the diaries in four volumes. 11 We are in a position now to examine in greater detail Cavid Bey’s ‘Armenian Question’. The diaries provide us with a new lens through which to consider 1915. They complement the existing analyses and narratives of Turco-Armenian relations and the violence in the 1910s by inserting into the picture the more immediate emotional and evaluative responses of historical actors. The interaction between their political leanings and their emotions, invoking such emotional elements as commitment, distrust, betrayal and national pride and dignity, seem to have informed, at least in part, their actions in the 1910s. 12 With the recent ‘emotional turn’ in historical writing, it has been argued that even though emotions may differ in form and sources, they ‘tend to affect decisions to a greater extent than rational calculations’. 13 They are indications of ‘what matters, of what is valued and devalued’, and are often a ‘primary catalyst or hindrance to political mobilisation’. 14 Their origins are usually traced to biological factors but also to the personality structure of the individuals, sociocultural constructions and social structural traditions. The last, in particular, suggests considering how ‘relations of power and status generate certain kinds of emotions depending on where one is in these hierarchies and to whom one is reacting’, a premise that is very applicable to the issue of Turco- Armenian and inter- imperial relations in the 1910s. 15 Cavid Bey’s diaries furnish us with a fairly rich source for the Ottoman perspective here. The 1912–14 reform talks have been studied largely with reference to British and German sources, and little attention has been paid to the
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16 Roderick Davison, ‘The Armenian Crisis, 1912–1914’, American Historical Review 53, no. 3 (1 April 1948): 481–505; Joseph Heller, ‘Britain and the Armenian Question, 1912–14: A Study in Real Politik’, Middle Eastern Studies, 16, no (January 1980): 3–26. See also Raymond Kevorkian, The Armenian Genocide: A Complete History (London: I.B, 2011), part 3. 17 Hans-Lukas Kieser, Mehmet Polatel and Thomas Schmutz, ‘Reform or Cataclysm? The Agreement of 8 February 1914 Regarding the Ottoman Eastern Provinces’, Journal of Genocide Research 17, no. 3 (2015): 285–304. 18 See, for instance, Taner Akçam, A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006); and Taner Akçam, The Young Turks’ Crime against Humanity: The Armenian Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire (Princeton, NJ, and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2012).
Russian, Ottoman and Armenian materials. 16 A recent study by Hans-Lukas Kieser, Mehmet Polatel and Thomas Schmutz, however, incorporated Ottoman state archive materials into analysis of the reform question. 17 My intention here is to place under scrutiny Cavid Bey’s notes, along with a number of other unexplored primary and secondary sources, including the Russian diplomatic correspondence during the rather contested Armenian reform talks. More specifically, I will look at Cavid’s evaluative responses to and emotional perception of, first, the reform question of 1912–14, which was a key issue during the post- revolutionary era where the establishment of the rule of law in the eastern provinces and imperial security were concerned; and second, the Armenian genocide and its memory. What was the reform question about? What was Cavid Bey’s take on it? And how did he ‘live’ and react to the genocide in the heat of the time and after? I have structured this chapter in a manner to address these questions respectively.
Masters of the house
The 1915 genocide was the result of a dialogical and intersubjective process, the origins of which can be traced back to the middle and later decades of the nineteenth century, when the seeds of Armenian nationalism were sown and the Ottoman Turkish elites came to target what they perceived as centrifugal movements that threatened imperial security. 18 The talks surrounding the so- called Armenian reform between 1912 and February 1914 formed one of the crucial moments in this process. It was in this period that the Unionists found themselves in the middle of a dispute between the Armenians and the Kurds in Eastern Anatolia. The Porte categorized the threats and interests of each group in line with its own security considerations and acted (or failed to act) in favour of the status quo in the 1910s. At the
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20 Kieser, Polatel and Schmutz, ‘Reform or Cataclysm’, p. 289. 21 Kieser, Polatel and Schmutz, ‘Reform or Cataclysm’, p. 289. 22 Kieser, Polatel and Schmutz, ‘Reform or Cataclysm’, p. 289. 23 Consul McGregor to Lowther, 21 August 1911, TNA, FO 424/228. This citation was kindly and generously drawn to my attention by Mehmet Polatel. 24 Kieser, Polatel, and Schmutz, ‘Reform or Cataclysm’, p. 289.
discourses inspired hopes for the return of these confiscated lands to their original owners. In pursuit of this goal, the Armenians ran a campaign of public protests and petitions, which included appeals by the Armenian Revolutionary Foundation (ARF), the Social Democratic Hnchak Party and the Armenian patriarchate. Although the Adana massacres of 1909 disrupted the talks between the state authorities and the Armenian groups, by autumn of the same year, an agreement was reached to establish a commission to investigate and settle the land disputes in the region. Local commissions, the minister of the interior ordered in August, were to mediate the interests of local elements. These measures and the prospect of some of the land being returned fanned the flames of Kurdish protests and resistance. Kieser, Polatel and Schmutz write that ‘As local commissions started to take decisions regarding the return of disputed lands to Armenians, a group of influential Kurdish chiefs, including the notorious Haydaranlı Hüseyin Paşa, fled to Persia with their families, men and livestock.’ 20 But the authors do not explain the reasons for his flight. Since Ottoman military power was formed in significant part by the men of Haydaranlı Paşa, whatever the reasons, his departure constituted ‘a security risk’ for the Porte, which therefore ‘promised’ in 1910 ‘to recognise their rights over the properties they had seized on the condition of their return in a short period of time’. 21 This concession meant curbing the arbitration process and allowing the continuation of land disputes, with a new wave of violence in the region. After 1910, the Porte would restart ‘the policy of settling Muslim migrants and nomadic Kurdish tribes on disputed Armenian lands’. 22 In summer 1911, when Cavid Bey paid a visit to Eastern Anatolia to garner support for the CUP, his public utterances represented a Unionist bid for the support of Muslim popular opinion. As the British consul of Erzurum reported, the policy of the government was disaffecting the Armenian population; CUP– ARF relations were daily losing intimacy, and local Kurdish movements were causing the authorities anxiety. 23 At the end of 1911, Armenian deputies issued a joint memorandum asking for the ‘resolution of land disputes vital for the establishment of order and rule of law and criticised the constitutional regime for failing to fulfil its promise to guarantee the lives and properties of all Ottoman subjects’. 24 The
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25 Kieser, Polatel and Schmutz, ‘Reform or Cataclysm’, pp. 289–90. 26 Kieser, Polatel and Schmutz, ‘Reform or Cataclysm’, pp. 288, 289, 290. 27 Diary entry for 23 October 1911, Tanin 52 (22 October 1943). See also Churchill, World Crisis, vol. 2, pp. 432–3. 28 Diary entry for 29 April 1913, Tanin 231 (21 April 1944) 29 [Cavid Bey] to Gulbenkian, 29 December 1912, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation Archives, Lisbon, LDN00051.
Porte responded with a ‘notification to the Minister of Justice for the faster implementation of court orders in cases of land disputes and to abolish the temporal limitation established for the arbitration procedure’. 25 About two months before its fall in July 1912, and amid the political crisis with the opposition within, led by the Halaskers, the CUP cabinet agreed on establishing a reform commission for the eastern provinces that would inquire into land disputes and settle them in absolute terms. The commission experienced great delays, however, before it was ready to start its work, which was interpreted by foreign observers as foot- dragging. According to Kieser, Polatel and Schmutz, ‘no substantial legal or administrative plan was put into force’ until the radical change in international dynamics accompanying the eruption of hostilities in the Balkans. 26 Along with other Unionists, Cavid Bey was alarmed when the first of the bilateral alliances that would become the First Balkan League was signed between Serbia and Bulgaria in March 1912, and when the Italians began bombarding the Dardanelles to force the Porte to surrender Tripoli on 8 April. Cavid had contacted Winston Churchill, seeking an alliance with Britain against the Italians, but despite Churchill’s positive attitude, the Foreign Office turned down the Ottoman proposal. 27 He was also in continuous talks with European diplomats at the time about access to the Straits, closed by the Porte following the Italian bombardment. When the Porte finally lost Tripoli and the Balkan League attacked Turkey, Cavid would write in his diaries that no friend appeared to defend the Ottoman cause. 28 The late summer and autumn of 1912 brought a dramatic turn of events. In July, the CUP fell from office, and Cavid, after imprisonment for twenty days in mid-September, fled to Europe. He decided to retire from politics for good and look for a job in Europe with the support of the Ottoman Armenian Caloust S. Gulbenkian. 29 In the meantime, amid uncertainty in Eastern Anatolia, unrest among the Kurds raised tensions dramatically. The Armenians then appealed for international support: first, Armenian Catholics and the Armenian Orthodox patriarch of Istanbul appealed to Russia as ‘a defender of the native Christian peoples in the East... to take under [its] wing [the] suffering Armenian
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34 Heller, ‘Britain and the Armenian Question’, p. 6; Davison, ‘Armenian Crisis’, p. 490. 35 Entry for 27 February 1913, Tanin 192 (13 March 1944). 36 Davison, ‘Armenian Crisis’, p. 489. 37 Wangenheim to Theobald von Bethman Hollweg, 12 April 1913, AA (M) R 14079:7087; cf. Thomas Schmutz, ‘The German Role in the Reform Discussion of 1913–14’ (paper read at the conference ‘The Clash of Empires’, University of Cambridge, 13 June 2014), p. 4. 38 Davison, ‘Armenian Crisis,’ p. 492. 39 Entry for 27 February 1913, Tanin 192 (13 March 1944).
potential foreign involvement on behalf of the Armenians was perceived by the Unionists as a threat to the territorial integrity of the empire. At the human level, there was little military protection for the Armenian peasantry against the armed Kurdish chiefs, as Armenian soldiers had been called to the Balkan front, while subordinate Turkish officials were tending ‘to favour their fellow Muslims against Christian Armenians’. 34 Throughout 1913, negotiations for the reform plan were held at a rather slow pace between the representatives of the CUP, on the one hand, and the European Great Powers and the Armenians, on the other. This was partially because the particular interests of Germany and Russia were also on the table. The question was of great importance for the Germans, because clashes between the Kurds and Armenians were taking place within the Berlin– Baghdad railway zone. The newly appointed Istanbul ambassador, Baron Hans von Wangenheim, whom Cavid considered ‘very pro-Turkish’, 35 was convinced that Russia was provoking the clashes to use them as a pretext for military intervention. 36 Russian domination in the region could diminish the prestige of the Germans. 37 Therefore, Wangenheim came to defend German cooperation with the Porte in order to make reforms in the region, thus at once precluding Russian intervention and making the Porte grateful to Germany. 38 In February 1913, he would tell Cavid that Germany would work ‘to prevent the Armenians falling onto the lap of the Russians’. 39
National pride and local security
Little effort is required to discern in Cavid Bey’s diaries his growing frustration at the increasing involvement of the European powers in Ottoman domestic politics. Although he spent most of 1913 abroad, dealing with the infamous loan and concessions negotiations with European agents, he was also engaged in several talks with Europeans and Armenians on the Armenian reform question. Moreover, he paid a second visit, in summer 1913, to Eastern Anatolia to make his own observations first hand. According to William
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40 Sir William Edward Goschen to Grey, 7 March 1913, TNA, FO 371/1798/195. 41 Entries for 23 August 1913, MR II, p. 33; 25 August 1913, MR II, p. 39; 5 November 1913, MR II, pp. 208–9. 42 Entry for 28 September 1913, MR II, p. 114. 43 For an analysis of the Armenian approach to the problem, see Robert Koptaş, ‘Zohrab, Papazyan ve Pastırmacıyan’ın kalemlerinden 1914 Ermeni reformu ile İttihatçı–Taşnak müzakereleri’, Tarih ve Toplum Yeni Yaklaşımlar 5 (2007): 159–78. 44 Entry for 23 September 1913, MR II, p. 105. 45 Francis Leveson, Viscount Bertie to Grey, 10 January 1913, TNA, FO 800/180; Davison, ‘Armenian Crisis’, p. 490. 46 Entry for 28 April 1913; Tanin 225 (15 April 1944). Only a month earlier, Boghos had informed the Russian ambassador Izvolsky that Turkish Armenians did not wish to raise the question of autonomy or change of nationality; they were intending only to ensure the implementation of the reforms envisaged by the Treaty of Berlin. Aleksandr Petrovich Izvolsky to Sazanov, 13 March 1913, in Ministerstvo, pp. 23–5.
Edward Goschen, the British ambassador to Berlin, Cavid Bey considered the issue a question of land redistribution rather than politics. For him, it was an internal problem that could be solved by restoring, as far as possible, the land taken from the Armenians and settling the 250,000 Muslim refugees under favourable climatic and economic conditions. 40 In his talks with European officials, therefore, he insisted repeatedly that the Porte was willing to undertake reforms in Armenia, but this had to be done without hurting the national pride of the empire. 41 Otherwise, he believed, interference could jeopardize the security and union of the entire country, as previous experience in Crete, the Balkans and eastern Rumelia had shown. 42 As far as Armenian–Unionist relations were concerned, the absence of reforms in 1913 that had been promised since 1895 would fuel Armenian suspicions that the Porte was insincere in its profession about implementing reform. The Armenian elites would ask for ‘guarantees’ in the form of a foreign governor appointed in Eastern Anatolia. 43 Although Cavid’s frustration at this point was concentrated on European involvement in Ottoman affairs, he became increasingly anxious that the Armenians were ‘unwittingly’ serving as a channel for growing Russian influence over Ottoman domestic politics. 44 At a luncheon meeting in Paris in April 1913 at the residence of the Ottoman Armenian oil magnate Calouste Sarkis Gulbenkian, the conversation between Cavid and Boghos Nubar Pasha was illustrative of this mutual discomfort. The latter was in the city to encourage cabinet- level initiatives in France and Britain that might bring about the appointment of a European governor of the ‘Armenian’ provinces. 45 When Boghos Nubar mentioned his plans, Cavid was exasperated, contending that the best interests of Turkey (‘Türkiye’, as Cavid wrote in his diaries) and Armenia would be served by working together – that is, without European interference – for reform. 46
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52 Heller, ‘Britain and the Armenian Question’, pp. 8–9; entry for 23 September 1913, MR II, p. 105. 53 ‘Cavid Bey Efendinin Beyanatı’, Tanin (16 July 1913), p. 3. I would like to thank Mehmet Polatel for drawing my attention to this source. 54 André N. Mandelstam, La Société des Nations et les Puissances devant le Problème Arménien (Paris: Pédone, 1926), pp. 21–3. While devising plans, the Russians turned for inspiration to the negotiations of the 1860s for the establishment of a security regime in the Ottoman- controlled Mount Lebanon. Giers to Sazanov, 8 June 1913, in Ministerstvo, pp. 51–69. 55 Kieser, Polatel and Schmutz, ‘Reform or Cataclysm’, p. 296.
differences of opinion developed among Britain’s representatives. 52 With the preservation of the Entente paramount in London’s considerations, the end result was that the Foreign Office decided not to risk Russian jealousy and instead to redevise the Porte’s plan in a way that would invite all the powers to participate in the execution of reforms. In the meantime, the Porte invited French and German officers to act as inspectors in Eastern Anatolia, another initiative that bore no fruit. During his visit to Eastern Anatolia in July 1913, Cavid Bey would announce that the only difference of opinion between the Unionists and Boghos Nubar was on the issue of ‘guarantees’. He was hopeful that the issue could be resolved by the appointment of European officials with long- term contracts, who would remain in power even when a cabinet changed. The Porte, he added, was serious and sincere in its desire to implement reforms as soon as possible, because disturbances in Eastern Anatolia could affect the stability of the entire empire. This was why the Porte had wanted to employ officers from Britain, Germany and France. 53 However, European security concerns were already pushing the powers toward multilateral diplomacy. In the summer of 1913, a European commission was established in Istanbul with the participation of the dragomans of the five European powers. No Ottoman representative was invited. The Europeans held eight meetings at the summer house of the consul of Austria in Yeniköy, Istanbul, in July 1913, mainly to discuss the scheme propounded by André Mandelstam, first dragoman at the Russian embassy in Istanbul. The Mandelstam plan called for the creation of a single province out of the six provinces in Eastern Anatolia associated with historic Armenia, and for the appointment by the Great Powers of a Christian as Ottoman governor. 54 The German dragoman, Fritz Schönberg, was dissatisfied with the articles favouring non-Muslims. His ambassador, Baron Wangenheim, similarly believed that ‘privileges for the Armenians could lead to social envy and, subsequently, to massacres, as had been the case, in the German’s view, in Adana in 1909’. 55 Moreover, the new province would
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56 Davison, ‘Armenian Crisis’, pp. 497–8; Armyanskij vopros i genocid armjan v Turtsii (1913–1919): Materialy Politarhiva MID Kajzerovskoj Germanii (Erevan: Gitijun, 1995), pp. 67–8; Mandelstam, Société des Nations, pp. 21–3; Sarkisian, ‘Armyanskij Vopros i Rossiya v 1912–1914 gg.’, p. 117. 57 Kieser, Polatel and Schmutz, ‘Reform or Cataclysm’, p. 296. 58 Kieser, Polatel and Schmutz, ‘Reform or Cataclysm’, p. 292. 59 Kieser, Polatel and Schmutz, ‘Reform or Cataclysm’, p. 296. 60 Kieser, Polatel and Schmutz, ‘Reform or Cataclysm’, pp. 296–7. The text of the agreement appears in André N. Mandelstam, Le Sort de l’Empire Ottoman (Lausanne: Payot, 1917), pp. 236–8. 61 Ambassador Sir Charles M. Marling to Grey, 7 October 1913, TNA, FO 371/1815/45803.
include lands within the sphere of the railway being built to Baghdad, in which the Germans were the principal investors. 56 The outcome of the meetings was a stalemate, the lack of compromise demonstrating that an international agreement could be achieved only ‘if Germany and Russia found a common denominator’. Hence, after the commissioners’ meetings ended in July, negotiations were conducted on a ‘bilateral level between the main [European] protagonists of the diplomatic crisis’. 57 In the following months, exacerbating circumstances would dictate decisions. In autumn 1913, local discontent reached new dimensions when the head of a prominent Kurdish clan, Abdurrezzak Bedirxan, sought ‘to instigate a Kurdish nationalist movement with Russian assistance’, an event ‘inextricably linked to the issue of Armenian reforms’. 58 The Kurdish chief was protesting against the fact that the Kurds had not been consulted in reform talks about a region whose majority population were Kurds. Wangenheim and Giers were then ‘ordered to find a solution and present it to other powers’, the diplomats eventually agreeing to a two- sector solution, with ‘the inclusion of Trabzon as a seventh province’ – Trabzon being notably less ‘Armenian’ in history and ethnic composition. 59 According to the new Russo-German consensus, after the signing of a treaty there would be two sectors, each with its own inspector- general. The inspectors would be chosen by the Porte, but would come from Europe. And after a new census, Christians and Muslims would ultimately be represented in local government (the ‘general councils’ [Medjissi Oumoumi] and administrative committees [Endjoumen]) in each of these provinces proportionate to their share of the provincial population; although, to insure against foot- dragging by the Porte, Armenians would be given equal representation until the new census was complete. 60 Unaware of this agreement and having seen that conference diplomacy in July had failed, in mid-October the Porte had thrown in its lot with the British for the third time. 61 On 19 October, Talaat informed Cavid that he had
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67 Entry for 28 October 1913, MR II, pp. 188–9. At another meeting, on 28 October, Cavid asked Talaat to send inspectors- general to the east immediately. Hüseyin Cahit, who was also present at the meeting, agreed to act as inspector, and Talaat agreed to appoint him shortly. 68 Entry for 1 November 1913, MR II, p. 199; Note pour le Ministre des Affaires Etrangères au sujet du Cavid Bey, 18 March 1913, Archives Ministère des Affaires étrangères et du Développement international, La Courneuve, Paris (hereafter, AMAE) CP Turquie 373/147. 69 Entry for 4 December 1913, MR II, p. 367. 70 Davison, ‘Armenian Crisis’, pp. 503–4. See also Memo sur Relations de la France avec la Turquie, 19 February 1914, AMAE CP Turquie 300/47. 71 Mallet to Grey, 31 October 1913, TNA, FO 371/1815/49535.
its faults. Even then the Europeans would be ‘more guilty and responsible’ in the event that no solution was reached. 67 The powers were not only preventing political reforms, he wrote in early November, but were also hampering infrastructural investments, such as the construction of the Baghdad railway in the Armenian provinces, on whose concessions he had long been working. 68 In Cavid Bey’s view, the powers were not going to sacrifice their immediate financial and economic interests to solve the Armenian Question. He therefore did not take seriously any of the threats of financial pressure that came from the Russians or the Armenians. As he once only half- jokingly told Arthur Zimmermann, the undersecretary of state at the Germany Foreign Office, if the powers would give the Porte its economic freedom in return for Armenian reform, the Porte would be keen to accept their scheme as proposed. 69 As a matter of fact, the reform agreement was linked to the financial talks of 1913–14, as the Quai d’Orsay slowed down loan talks with the Porte to ‘exert pressure for the acceptance of Russian demands’. 70 Given the Russian–German agreement, however, by the end of October the Porte had little room for manoeuvre. Although Talaat Bey seemed to British agents inclined to make real reforms, he seemed ‘equally determined to resist their imposition by the Powers’. According to Sir Louis Mallet, the British ambassador in Istanbul, the situation was now largely a question of form: 71 ‘[Talaat] would listen to and probably adopt suggestions made by the Powers... privately.’ Thus, in the face of the Russo-German agreement, in the second half of November 1913 Talaat came to terms with the idea of appointing European officers, but they would come from smaller nations and be chosen by Istanbul. In a telegram to Cavid, he wrote that the issue could be resolved by (1) accepting the principle of proportional representation of the Armenians in the administrative councils, (2) accepting the appointment of security officers through an appropriate formula, (3) agreeing to the appointment of inspectors from smaller nations, (4) giving them
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72 Said Halim Paşa to Ottoman Ambassadors, 19 November 1913, in Ermeni Meselesinin Siyasi Tarihçesi, p. 108; entry for 21 November 1913, MR II, p. 284. 73 Entry for 27 December 1913, MR II, p. 420; Paul Weitz to Geheimrat [Unknown], 12 January 1914, Deutsche Bank Archives OR1322; Sazanov to Giers, 28 December 1913, in Ministerstvo, p. 131. 74 Entry for 30 December 1913, MR II, p. 429. When Giers left Istanbul, Constantin Gulkevitch continued and concluded the talks. Adamov to Giers, 28 December 1913, in Ministerstvo, p. 133; entry for 28 December 1913, MR II, p. 426. 75 Mallet to Grey, 2 February 1914, TNA, FO 371/2116/4583; Heller, ‘Britain and the Armenian Question’, p. 20; Davison, ‘Armenian Crisis’, p. 504. In early February, Boghos Nubar Paşa sent a message to the Porte congratulating them on the peaceful solution achieved. In his reply, Said Halim Paşa offered Nubar Paşa a post as minister in the Porte. The latter declined the offer; Münir Süreyya Bey, in Ermeni Meselesinin Siyasi Tarihçesi, p. 114. 76 ‘Armenian Reforms: Nubar Pasha on the New Scheme’, The Times, 20 February 1914, p. 5. 77 Mallet to Grey, 19 April 1914, TNA, FO 371/2130/131. 78 R. W. Bullard to Mallet, 8 April 1914, TNA, FO 371/2130/18246.
competencies, and (5) demonstrating to the powers through their ambassadors that the Porte was acting on the issue. Talaat added that the Armenians would not oppose these suggestions. 72 He was right. Following a private meeting with Zohrab and Vartkes later in December, Cavid wrote in his diaries that the Armenian position and Talaat’s suggestions were now reconcilable. Amid rumours that organized Armenian forces in Eastern Anatolia might revolt and reports of the growing danger that new massacres might be perpetrated by Muslim mullahs awaiting orders from the CUP, 73 Cavid Bey started negotiations with Giers on the details and wording of the treaty. 74 The official reform plan was signed between Russia and the Ottoman Empire on 8 February 1914. 75 It stipulated that the powers would verbally advise the Porte on the names of two foreign inspectors- general with extensive control. The latter would reside in Eastern Anatolia. In an open letter published in The Times, Boghos Nubar Pasha celebrated a new era that was opening for the unfortunate Armenian populations in the region. 76 The agreement, with the nuances in wording, with the choice of smaller nations as the source for the new foreign inspectors and with the ‘advisory’ role of the European powers, was prima facie a success for the Porte. Yet it was hardly a success for local Muslims, whose sentiments had been vetted as early as Cavid’s 1911 trip to Eastern Anatolia. In early April, the Porte chose Louis Constant Westenenk, a manager at the Dutch East Indies Company, and Nicolai Hoff, a major in the Norwegian army, as the new inspectors. Shortly thereafter, the papers reported a Kurdish revolt in Bitlis, which had been engineered by reactionary elements among the Kurdish tribes who opposed the projected reforms. 77 Meanwhile, two conflicts in Erzurum, it was reported, had given rise to ‘ill- feelings between the Turks and Armenians’. 78 Although,
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82 Entry for 2 August 1914, Tanin 1 (15 November 1944) 83 Cemal Kutay, Şehit Sadrazam Talat Paşa’nın Gurbet Hatıraları, vol. 2 (Istanbul: Kültür Yayınları, 1983), pp. 907–9; Y. Hikmet Bayur, Türk İnkılabı Tarihi, vol. 3 (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, 1991), p. 188. 84 Zafer Toprak, İttihad-Terakki ve Cihan Harbi: Savaş Ekonomisi ve Türkiye’de Devletçilik (Istanbul: Homer Kitabevi, 2003), pp. 109–10. 85 Entry for 27 April 1915, MR III, p. 69. 86 Entry for 14 June 1915, MR III, pp. 84–5.
‘An irremovable stain’
Cavid Bey resigned from his position in the Ottoman cabinet in early November, just after the Ottoman Empire entered World War I. He had already felt betrayed and excluded by the Unionist leadership when, on 2 August 1914, he had found out that a secret agreement had been made with the Germans without his knowledge or consent. 82 He was against entering the war, knowing that the empire’s finances were unfit for it, and for some time he had been forcefully resisting Enver Pasha’s designs. 83 After the start of the war, and until 1917, Cavid Bey did not take up any cabinet position. Yet indirectly he ran the government’s financial policies, seeking ways to maintain the economy such as making loan deals in Berlin and Vienna and tightening domestic financial policy. He also played a leading role in the internal loan campaign and the establishment of the National Credit Bank. 84 In April 1915, he was in Berlin with orders from Talaat not to return to Istanbul before resolving the disagreements around amendments to the final version of the Baghdad Railway contract, or at least not until ‘putting them in a shape that would allow for continuing the negotiations in Istanbul’. 85 Perhaps because his attention was on financial matters and on negotiations with the Porte’s allies, the situation of Eastern Anatolia in late 1914 and in the first half of 1915 receives no mention in Cavid’s diaries – even though he did spend about ten days in Istanbul after 10 May, before returning to Europe. Judging from the content of the diaries per se, he seemed to have had no knowledge of the CUP’s policies on the Armenians in Eastern Anatolia until June 1915. This is when his notes on ‘the Armenian Question’ begin. On June 14, when he was still in Berlin, he received a letter from Krikor Zohrab’s son that Zohrab and Vartkes had been sent away to Konya. Their families had got in touch with Halil Bey, and the latter had cabled Talaat that such conduct toward two deputies without any reason would damage the honour and dignity of the chamber. Cavid commented that ‘[Halil] is unhappy with the treatment. Yet the poor man has no power to insist.’ 86
212 End of the Ottomans
87 Entry for 24 June 1915, MR III, p. 89. 88 Entry for 25 June 1915, MR III, p. 90. 89 Mr. Alberto to Elliot, 23 April 1916, TNA, FO 371/2770/94760. See also Kévorkian’s chapter in this book. 90 Entry for 19 August 1915, MR III, p. 128.
The diaries suggest that, ten days later, Cavid’s understanding of the events had unfolded further. He had received a letter from Hüseyin Cahit that mentioned the deplorable situation of the wives of Zohrab and Vartkes. According to Cahit, Madam Zohrab was asking whether Cavid Bey could intercede on behalf of her husband. Cavid was uncertain if he could help: ‘But to whom [can we] tell problems?’ He clearly intuited something dire, for ‘[i]f the aim was to interrogate only, they wouldn’t send these men from Istanbul all the way to Diyarbekir’. 87 Nevertheless, he wrote a letter to Talaat about the two Armenians, apparently in a mildly disapproving tone, for he noted rather vaguely in his diaries that ‘I [wrote that] the issues that he considered [now] resolved are [still] uncertain for the future [and] that with his intelligence, he should have understood this.’ 88 Although the two exchanged several telegrams on financial and economic issues in the following days and weeks, which Cavid noted down regularly, he never mentioned in his diaries whether he received a reply from Talaat on the fate of Zohrab and Vartkes. As Raymond Kévorkian explains in his chapter in this volume, what actually happened to the two Armenian deputies was that during their journey to the east they were first treated as honorary guests of the government, then murdered in cold blood near Urfa on 2 August. 89 Cavid Bey never mentioned the murder of the two in his diaries either. After his return to Istanbul on 19 August, 90 in his diary entry for 29 August–14 September 1915 (he stopped writing on a daily basis during this period), we find how Cavid perceived the cataclysms then taking place. The massacres went into the diaries again under the title ‘the Armenian Question’. In the 1943–5 version of the transcription, Hüseyin Cahit cut out this part. But Babacan and Avşar’s transcription discloses how at least one Unionist observed and experienced the occurrences in the heat of the moment. A lengthy passage, which in English comes to well over 600 words, allows us to follow Cavid’s tortuous reasoning as he poured out his anguish: ‘Ottoman history has never opened its pages, even during the time of the Middle Ages, onto such determined murder[s] and large scale cruelty,’ he exclaimed.
Honour and Shame The Diaries of a Unioni
Module: Transnational Organised CrimeE (CR7003)
University: University of East London
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