This paper is set in the environs of the Eastern Anatolian town of Palu at the turn of the twentieth century. At the heart of this investigation is a puzzle: how did the local elite manage to maintain their power in the face of first Tanzimat (1839-1876) and then Hamidian centralization (1876-1908)? Based on the study of a range of primary sources, it appears that the local elites were able to ‘use’ the Armenian Question, and the fears of the central authorities, to their advantage. The elites increasingly presented themselves as “loyal Muslims” in the face of supposedly “seditious Armenians” to maintain control of the land. We therefore suggest an innovative perspective to study the Armenian Question, in which the concept of identity should be approached historically rather than as taken for granted. To deepen our conceptual perspective on the relationship between the question of identity and Armenian Question, we draw significantly on the writings of W.E.B. Du Bois and thereby resort to a comparison between the late nineteenth century Eastern Anatolia and contemporaneous history of post-Reconstruction South in the US, which will help us make sense of similar patterns of group boundary maintenance, retention of hierarchies and mass violence. Our paper relies primarily on a voluminous legal file compiled from the catalogues of the Prime Ministry Ottoman Archives, İstanbul composed by different segments of the region’s population, including Armenian and Muslim peasants, members of the local elite and Armenian religious dignitaries. It is based on a group of official complaints which accuse the district governor of Palu, Mehmed Tevfik, of brutality and corruption. The narrative emerging out of the official process they prompted, which involves basically an executive inquiry and legal prosecution, provides an incredibly telling prism to study the changing configuration of land, power, and identity in the region and as an extension the Armenian Question. Our research is complemented principally by a meticulous reading of the contemporaneous ABCFM reports and memoirs.