The eastern provinces of the Ottoman Empire witnessed a great wave of anti-Armenian riots that took place in the autumn of 1895 and sporadically continued throughout 1896. These extensive massacres took the lives of thousands of Armenians, while several tens of thousands of Armenians had to convert to Islam in order to escape certain death. The origins, dynamics, extent, and repercussions of this momentous wave of riots inexplicably remain understudied. The lack of original research and misguided yet persistent assumptions still dominate scholarly understandings of these episodes of collective violence. In fact, the existing historiography tends to conceptualize the anti-Armenian riots of 1895-96 as a premeditated official policy in an attempt to annihilate or reduce the Armenian population. In addition, for scholars who argue that the Armenian genocide was the epitome of a policy of extermination already penned out in the late 19th century, the 1895-96 massacres are a mere episode leading up to 1915. In contrast to such narratives that simplify the complex sociopolitical dynamics of intercommunal strife, this paper highlights the preconditions that contributed to the genesis of a violent sociopolitical climate in the eastern provinces. As such, it suggests that a virulent mix of the state’s security policies, local power struggles, Muslim resentment of reforms in favor of Armenians, and revolutionary politics led to the birth of an unprecedented degree of violence. Stripping these violent events of their mythical character, my paper hopes to demonstrate that the responsibilities of state actors in the outbreak of the anti-Armenian riots go beyond the simple question of whether they grew out of a central plan. Unlike the existing narratives that focus merely on the complicity of the Hamidian regime in the mass killing, it underlines the importance of the collective and anonymous nature of the violence. By refraining from the idea that the perpetrators were simply criminal figures who had only been tempted by external forces, i.e. the central and local government, and that their act of mass killing was completely predetermined, this paper explores the agency and background motivations of those who participated in the riots. Consequently, it will argue that the intercommunal tensions and violence between the Armenian and Muslim populations flared out of the convergence of state security practices that increasingly branded the Armenians as a fundamental threat to imperial unity with the socioeconomic concerns and interests of local Muslim notables and Kurdish chieftains.

The Hamidian massacres of 1894–1896 started in Sasun and spread to a far-reaching geography in the provinces of Eastern Anatolia and Cilicia; more specifically, from Bitlis, Mu?, and Diyarbak?r to Sivas, Trabzon, Samsun, and Erzurum, and then continuing to Merzifon, Tarsus, Zeitun, Marash, Adana, Urfa, Birecik, and Aintab. Numerous acts of slaughtering, plundering, and destruction targeting Armenians were organized with the large-scale participation of local elites as well as Turkish-Kurdish Muslim populations. Ordinary elements of the dominant community were deliberately mobilized to participate in killings with the ‘permission’ of officials (governors, the sub-prefects, police, and gendarmerie forces). The self-justification employed by ordinary people for inflicting dreadful bodily harm on people who were often their neighbors, employers, employees, customers, and even friends was a desire for material gain, as well as local and personal grievances in some of the raids. It is also true that many Muslims who took part in the violence thought that they were acting completely in line with the Sultan’s wishes. This paper examines why and how the Hamidian massacres took place in Aintab and how two communities—Armenian and Muslim—which lived in relative harmony until the last quarter of the nineteenth century entered into ethnic strife. Most prominently, my attention is focused on how the events revolving around the Aintab Armenian massacres unfolded. The paper shows that the 1895 Aintab massacres were a demonstration of a climate of sharp enmity crumbling into direct violence exacted on a minority. It will also demonstrate that what preceded the massacres was the mobilization of Muslim groups’ (Turks, Kurds, and Arabs) grievances by political leaders and organizations, including local notables, provincial elites, and also the Muslim clergy. This paper analyzes how these groups provoked the majority with a deep sense of collective frustration into viewing Armenians as the fundamental cause of their difficult life conditions, as well as social, political, and economic lack of progress. As a result, each channel and physical space signifying the superiority of Armenian community over Muslims eventually became an object of this extreme violence. Finally, the paper explores the perpetrators’ focus of rage which was initially economically valuable assets, such as shops and businesses in the market area and the Armenian quarters of Aintab. It indicates how exposing these spatial planes to violence became a manifestation of feelings of economic envy and resentment in the eyes of Muslims.

This paper will examine the local, imperial and international dynamics and actors that contributed to the anti-Armenian pogroms and massacres that took place in the province of Bitlis during the Hamidian Massacres of 1895-6. In doing so, it seeks to revisit and go beyond the question of imperial responsibility in the massacres, addressing additional issues such as the impact of real and perceived breaches in social and cultural hierarchies (such as the announcement of the Provincial Reform Proposal pushed for by the British, French, and Russian governments), the organizational role of local notables and officials, and the imperial efforts at framing the widespread outbreak of anti-Armenian violence as "disorders" as a part of a general revolutionary and missionary conspiracy . The issue of the proportional representation of Armenians in provincial administration and the protection of their lives and property against pastoralist Kurds, or the so-called “Armenian Question” had gained international significance for a brief period of time after the Treaty of Berlin (1878). Increasing foreign involvement in the “Armenian Question” also resulted in the reconceptualization of the Ottoman Armenians as a potential security threat in official circles. Particularly, the last decade of the nineteenth century marked the criminalization of Ottoman Armenians at an unprecedented scale. Ottoman Armenians of different classes and professions came to be viewed by imperial authorities as foreign proteges. Furthermore, various Muslim groups and notables in Constantinople and the provinces adopted increasingly hostile attitudes towards Armenians, influenced by and reinforcing imperial perspectives. Policies were enacted and pursued at the imperial and local levels in order to monitor the movement of provincial Armenians, and their disposession at the hands of pastoralist tribes and local officials were tolerated. These developments coincided with the formation and expansion of the Armenian revolutionary movement in the form of two separate political parties. The Hamidian massacres of 1895-6 occurred within this context. The outbreak of violence in the province of Bitlis during 1895-6 is an appropriate case study of the Hamidian massacres, because of the critical significance of massacres in Sasun and Talori (both rural districts in the province) in 1894 in re-internationalizing the Armenian Question. In addition, local and imperial attitudes and shifts in policies can be discerned by the simultaneous use of imperial (governorate of Bitlis, sub-governorate of Muş, military commandants in Muş and Bitlis), consular (British vice-consul in Muş), and missionary records (Protestant missionaries in Sasun and Bitlis).

Early history of Armenian revolutionary politics is replete with myths and suppositions. Both Armenian and Turkish scholars focus on the later revolutionary movements when the movements reached certain maturity in terms of organizational framework and political power in the 1890s. They fail to pay attention to the ways in which earlier intra-communal conflicts based on class antagonisms and tensions between urban and rural areas interacted with these emerging ethnic projects. A close examination of the early period of the revolutionary politics, however, draws a different historical picture. Before the emergence of centrally organized revolutionary parties in the late 1880s and 1890s, many dissident groups existed throughout the region. They were acting primarily against local social and economic problems, without necessarily envisioning a salvation of their “nation” from their “Muslim overlords”. This paper aims to bring a fresh approach to our understanding of early Armenian revolutionary politics by contextualizing them within the political and social developments in the Ottoman society in the 1860s and 1870s. The paper examines uncovering of a clandestine Armenian organization by Ottoman state authorities in the city of Erzurum in 1882. The exposure of the organization was important for various reasons: first, a group of dissident Armenians had formed an organization locally before the rise of revolutionary-nationalist parties in the region; second, the members of the organizations and its leadership were peasants and artisans; third, it was the first time in the local community that peasants had a presence in city politics; and last but not least, it was also the first time that ethno-national themes and a distinct anti-state stance were voiced in the region. Based on Ottoman, Armenian and British sources, the paper will focus on the organization, mobilization of the movement and its attempt to consolidate ethnic identities. It will show that, the emergence of revolutionary politics was not as an alien ideology imported from abroad. Instead it was materialization of a nascent form of political thought which emerged a) as a reaction to elite-dominated local politics b) as an alternative to and in tandem with the imperial ethnicity, Ottomanism, that it eventually replaced. It argues that such early and under-examined local movements paved the way for the modernization of Armenian politics—its transition from a traditional, elite-based, and local phenomenon, to mass politics with participation by non-elite groups, and eventually to a “national” phenomenon, transgressing the province-center dichotomy and cutting across class boundaries.