how the armenian genocide forced a loyal ottoman officer to espouse the arab revolt

Article

How the Armenian Genocide Forced a Loyal Ottoman Officer to Espouse the Arab Revolt

Joseph A. Kéchichian

Abstract

Sarkis Torossian, an Armenian soldier in the Ottoman army who had been deco-rated for his military skills and achievements, decided to fight with the Arabs after he discovered indescribable sufferings imposed on his family and ethnic nation by the Empire. The transformation, which saw the devoted Ottoman officer turn into a rebel element, sheds light on some of the reasons why an Armenian participated in the Arab revolt.

Keywords

Sarkis Torossian, Armenian genocide, Galipoli campaign, Arab revolt

Established Ottoman atrocities against minority populations notwithstanding, Armenians, Greeks, and Jews, among others, were loyal subjects of the Sultan, with many serving in the military to defend the Empire from numerous foes. Many died on various battlefields because they were dependable individuals who fought with courage—and because they were devoted to their rulers—even if con-temporary historiography callously overlooked their sacrifices, accepted system-atic documentary purges, and otherwise concluded that non-Turks seldom shed blood to uphold the Porte and its legitimacy. To say that Ottoman rulers especially the post-1908 Ittihat ve Terakki Cemiyeti (Committee of Union and Progress—CUP) leadership adopted challenged norms of citizenship would indeed be an understatement. In fact, Armenians and other non-Turkic officers and enlisted men perished while their parents and siblings, ostensibly protected because of lofty decrees that recognized and rewarded allegiance, were systematically anni-hilated. Survivors were, in turn, stripped of their weapons and executed, often thrown into lost battles where they acted as mere fodder.1

Sarkis Torossian, a native Armenian citizen of the Ottoman Empire, was a distinguished soldier who defended the Porte despite ingrained fears that neces-sitated he tame dormant demons in his soul (Torossian 1947). That he did so with

Contemporary Review of the Middle East

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Joseph A. Kéchichian is Senior Fellow at King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies, Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. E-mail: [email protected]

2 Joseph A. Kéchichian

Contemporary Review of the Middle East, 1, 4 (2014): 1–19

distinction for the bulk of his youth, graduated from a leading military academy, received advanced training in Germany, served with honor in the army, earned decorations for his skills, and fought in earnest to protect and promote the inter-ests of his country were, to say the least, exceptional accomplishments. Despite a shameful campaign to discredit him and his ‘memoirs’ after a Turkish translation was finally published in 2012, and at the height of the Gallipoli campaign, Torossian subdued his fears especially when he discovered the indescribable suf-ferings imposed on his family and the ethnic nation.2 Despondent and melan-cholic, the young officer channeled his revenge into action as he gradually plotted revenge when all hope was lost. He chose to fight for Arab liberation after he befriended an Arab patriarch who served the Sultan, and whose family gradually became his, because the latter inspired him. In what must have been an act of utmost nobility, he decided to impart his considerable military expertise to the one nation that extended refuge to hundreds of thousands of Armenians, which came as no surprise given the tragedies that befell that nation.3

Officer Sarkis Torossian acted, and in so doing, partially ensured that hundreds of thousands of Armenian refugees would, over a very short period of time, be integrated in the Arab nations if few of his countrymen enjoyed that type of privi-lege after 600 years of co-existence within the Ottoman Empire. Simply stated, Arab nationalism helped preserve the Armenian nation from utter extinction, as noble Levantine and Muslim traditions practiced by devout Arabs sheltered survi-vors of the genocide, protected them, allowed them to practice their faith, and otherwise granted basic human rights that were denied in their native lands. In fact, and as demonstrated by an edict issued by the Sharif Husayn bin ‘Ali, the internationally recognized ruler of the Hejaz who initiated the 1916 Arab revolt, Arabs were called upon to protect Armenians not only because the Hashemite leadership loathed Ottoman behavior but also for humanitarian purposes. That edict, reproduced at the end of this essay, was one of the best pieces of evidence of genuine Arab commitments to the Armenian nation.4

In his remarkable memoirs, Torossian tells the story of a loyal soldier who was betrayed and who, in turn, renounced whatever pledges he made to uphold the values of the Ottoman Empire. His heroism endured against some odds, as his life-story encapsulated the tragedies Armenians confronted, though Arab nation-alism allowed for a most intriguing rebirth. How he both channeled oppression into survival and transformed grievances into opportunities are the kind of details that irritate critics though more honest observers cannot but admire his poise and determination. Although the tragedy that befell the Armenian nation was well known, Torossian’s memoirs added a unique feature heretofore unexamined by scholars who studied the Armenian genocide and that was critical to highlight as the world prepared to commemorate the centenary of the genocide, symbolically dated April 24, 1915 when the nation’s most brilliant intellectuals were summarily arrested and executed.

The transformation, which saw the devoted Ottoman officer turn into a rebel element, sheds light on some of the reasons why an Armenian participated in the

Armenian Genocide Forced a Loyal Ottoman Officer 3


Arab revolt and, perhaps, what kind of indebtedness Armenians who found refuge among Arabs owed Torossian.

Interestingly, while Levantine Arabs suffered the wrath of Ottoman authorities for nearly six centuries and knew all too well what Armenians, Assyrians and other minorities endured, and while most voluntarily opened their arms to wel-come wretched survivors that were forced to march into the Syrian deserts and beyond, many prized loyalty and service above all else. Consequently, and because Armenians and Arabs shared a common heritage of nationalism—as both sought freedom—the fact that few writers explored all that the two nations endured together was surprising. In fact, the period of time covered by Captain Torossian, especially from an indigenous perspective, deserved far greater atten-tion than many assumed because eye-witness accounts were so rare. Even if these memoirs are but a modest contribution toward the larger goals that the two nations apportioned to themselves, they nevertheless raise fundamental questions that deserve a careful reading, especially as both Armenians and Turks confront the realities of the centennnial commemorations.

Who was Sarkis Torossian?

Sarkis Torossian was born in 1893 into an Armenian peasant family in the village of Everek (Develi in post-Ataturk Turkey) located in Kayseri Province in Central Anatolia. After parochial school, the young boy displayed an interest in martial arts and wished to become a soldier, although Ottoman law prohibited non- Muslims from joining the ranks, at least until the 1908 revolution, although restrictions remained in place long after (Pierce 1896, p. 26). Undeterred, the young Sarkis enrolled at a school in Edirne, a city in Eastern Thrace close to the borders with Greece and Bulgaria, where he befriended an Ottoman–Arab named Muharram (Muharrem in Turkish), whose father, a Pasha, served as a Brigadier General in Constantinople (Istanbul only took its current name in 1930). As the two boys sealed their friendship, Torossian earned the Pasha’s trust and, in light of both the growing camaraderie between his son and Sarkis and, importantly, because of a deeply held secret that the general kept in his heart, he secured for the Armenian a position in the Military College. In 1914, the two young men graduated as Second Lieutenants and were immediately dispatched to serve within the army’s artillery division that was preparing for war. The Pasha’s secret was the identity of the officer’s daughter (Muharram’s sister) Jamilah (Jemileh), which literally means beautiful in Arabic, and who was an Armenian girl rescued by the Pasha from an earlier massacre.

Torossian fell in love with Jamilah, brought up as a proper Muslim young lady living in a respectable and traditional family, without knowing her original identity. After his graduation from the military academy, the young cadet was sent to Essen, Germany, to the Krupp military factory more precisely, where he received advanced training over a three-month period regarding the use of cannons. At the start of the



First World War, Torossian was appointed commander of Fort Ertogrul, which guarded the entrance of the Dardanelles. Early in 1915 when the Gallipoli cam-paign was in its early stages, Torossian and his men were credited with the sinking of a British battleship, though he maintained that his efforts resulted in the destruc-tion of three English battle cruisers between February 19 and March 18, 1915, along with a submarine in April 1915 that might possibly have been the HMS E15 of the British Royal Navy. As discussed below, these heroic accomplishments no longer appeared in any Ottoman/Turkish documents, although Torossian reported that his commander, Cevat Pasha, praised his efforts in various battles and that the Minister of War, Enver Pasha, congratulated him in person and proudly introduced him to high ranking German officers including Colar Freiherr von der Goltz and Liman von Sanders, two men on a rescue mission to save the Ottoman forces.

Even if denied by contemporary Turkish historians, and as reproduced in his book, Torossian personally received from the Minister of War Enver Pasha the Osmanlı Devleti Harp Madalyası (Ottoman State War Medal), certainly a major award for any Ottoman officer.5 The fact that some historians doubted the veracity of the document and even went so far as to suggest that Torossian may well have fabricated it seemed incredulous given the mere fact that the Armenian officer was promoted and assigned to the Gallipoli battlefield to defend the state. Simple logic would dictate that no Armenian would be assigned to such a critical battle-field if he were not the genuine article.

The Gallipoli Campaign

Between April 25, 1915 and January 9, 1916, the Ottoman Empire defended the vital Dardanelles Straits from Britain and France, both of which intended to secure the sea route to Russia, then a Western ally. Ambitious landings followed brutal naval attacks on the Gallipoli Peninsula, whose goal probably included an even-tual invasion of the capital city, though the assaults were successfully repelled. For contemporary Turkey, the Gallipoli campaign, or the ‘Battle of Çanakkale’ (Çanakkale Savası), illustrated steadfast military accomplishments given that over half-a-million allied soldiers could not accomplish their goals and were eventually withdrawn. The eight-month long campaign resulted in massive casu-alties, estimated to have topped the quarter million figure on each side, one of the bloodiest campaigns in the First World War (Erickson 2001a, p. 94, 2001b).

Captain Torossian fought at Gallipoli as a loyal Ottoman officer alongside his best friend, Muharram, who was badly wounded on September 29, 1915. His discussion and analysis of the battlefield attested to the many sacrifices that he and his brave men endured, which further illustrated his loyalty to the Sultan and the Empire, something that contemporary Turkish historians overlooked to their great intellectual peril. In fact, the officer’s myriad details, which covered the gamut of what actually occurred in the thick of combats affirmed his innate dedi-cation to the cause, namely, to defend Gallipoli.



When Torossian received word that Muharram was severely injured during battle, and that the wounded young man had asked to see his ‘friend’, the Armenian rushed to see him. Over the course of several meaningful hours, and just before Muharram passed away, Torossian’s life went topsy-turvy as he discovered that Jamilah was an Armenian after all and that the Pasha rescued her from sure death. The startling confession, coming from a dying ‘brother’, was accompanied by a clear wish that Torossian ought to marry Jamilah, which leads to yet another dra-matic encounter as Sarkis transmits the revelation to the young woman (Torossian 1947, pp. 86, 100–102, 185–186).

The 1915 Armenian Genocide

The Armenian Genocide cost the lives of an estimated 1.5 million souls that, for all practical purposes, intended to wipe out a nation.6 Beyond those who perished under atrocious conditions, it must be recognized that Ottoman plans failed because the nation survived, and even flourished. While it may be true that Armenians were destroyed in their motherland, dozens of new fatherlands were established, particularly in the Arab world—in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Palestine and Egypt—and several Western countries, led by France, Canada, Britain, and the United States of America, and it was in the latter that Torossian found refuge.7

By March 1915, that is even before the Gallipoli campaign started and where he served—it is worth repeating—with distinction, Torossian revealed that gossip around the massacres of Armenians became frequent. He probably knew that Armenians employed by the state were gradually relieved of their duties and that Armenian soldiers were systematically disarmed. ‘It was rumored’, Torossian wrote, ‘that great massacres were to be perpetrated and that the Armenian popula-tion was to be annihilated or driven into a terrible slavery in the interior’ … and ‘I began to wonder what my own fate would be’ (Torossian 1947, p. 60). In the pages that followed this grave concern, he described the meeting that he had with Cevat Pasha, his commander at Gallipoli, who knew that Christian officers were being stripped of their weapons and that Torossian had certainly heard about the systematic order though he did everything in his power to alleviate the young man’s concerns since he did not want to lose one of his most capable soldiers. Given what was at stake at Gallipoli, Cevat Pasha wanted Torossian to stay on active duty and repeatedly pleaded with the Minister of War, Enver Pasha, to keep ‘an officer who can’t be replaced’ by his side. Ordered to appear before Enver Pasha, Torossian experienced the humiliation of being detained with anti- Armenian criminals because he appeared with his ‘sword and side arms’, though the War Minister’s minions eventually fetched him from a holding cell, apologized for treating a ‘national hero’ with disrespect, returned his revolver and sword, and ushered him into Enver Pasha’s chambers (Torossian 1947, pp. 60–68). The hilarity of these encounters are some of the best discussions between Ottoman officers that illustrated the utterly dysfunctional state of the bureaucracy in charge of the decaying Empire.



To be sure, Torossian was anxious about his life and afraid of death, though he started to ask himself fundamental questions. Still, while engaged in several Gallipoli battles and during the initial stages of the genocide (when Armenians were forcefully deported in what was an open secret among high-ranking Ottoman officers), Torossian continued to serve, assured that no harm would be done to his immediate family. Why he believed this was an impossible question to answer, and there is nothing in his book that buttressed the argument regarding his confi-dence in such individuals as Enver Pasha who, apparently, personally gave him assurances that no harm would come to his parents. What Torossian wrote, never-theless, was that the governor of the Kayseri province, one Salih Zeki Bey, alleg-edly ignored direct orders from Enver Pasha and continued with the deportation of his family. This may well have been the case as Torossian’s father Ohannes, and mother Vartuhi, were murdered while his sole sister Bayzar survived. It was unclear when Sarkis discovered the truth because he continued to serve in Macedonia, then in Romania, and finally in Arabia, searching for his sister all along, whom he eventually found at the Tal Halaf concentration camp in Syria. He saved her, of course, though Bayzar succumbed to harsh health conditions.

Torossian shared deep insights on how he found his sister, and described how Bayzar’s eyewitness testimony helped him hone ideas he nurtured into a concrete plan to defect and, if possible, to avenge his martyred family and nation. While a few Turkish authors questioned Torossian’s loyalty to the Porte, it was worth repeating that he did not defect until after he received confirmation, from his sur-viving sister no less, that their parents were massacred. In other words, it was after Bayzar corroborated that most of their family members perished at the height of the genocide that Torossian switched sides and joined the fight against the Empire. Still, and at great risk to himself, he continued to serve in the army while he con-nected with Arab commanders, especially Major Nuri-Bey (Nuri Yusuf), an Arab staff officer from the 14th Army Corps who belonged to an upper crust family and whose cousin was hanged in Damascus under Jamal Pasha’s orders (Aktar 2012). Over a period of several months, Torossian earned the Arab commanders’ trust, as he added value to the great revolt that eventually liberated Damascus.

Inasmuch as one of the great moments of this narrative, albeit drastically short given its importance, was the captain’s high-risk trek from Nablus to Gaza with a few trusted men to look for Jamilah, one simply wondered where Torossian drew the strength to embark on such a journey. Going through British controlled territories from the territories west of the Jordan River or present day West Bank, to what would eventually become one of the world’s most heavily populated areas, and where Jamilah and her mother lived after the Pasha left Constantinople to return to Arabia, Torossian provided solid insights on conditions in Palestine. The young lady, an Armenian orphan rescued by the Pasha during an earlier massacre, was heartbroken over her brother’s loss and fell in a state of stupor. Whether the added awareness of her true identity and, perhaps, the knowledge that her lover was engaged in danger-ous battles with fears that she might never see him again sealed her fate cannot be determined from Torossian’s prose. What the reader is told is that Jamilah was on the



brink of death when Sarkis reached Gaza and died in his arms shortly afterwards. ‘I raised Jemileh in my arms, the pain and terror in her eyes melted until they were bright as stars again, stars in an oriental night, the lids drooped slowly and so she died, as a dream passing,’ he recollected (Torossian 1947, p. 186). This intricate sentence illustrated how the grieving young officer added his Jamilah to the growing number of genocide victims, and which further confirmed his determination to fight against a system he concluded caused nothing but death and mayhem.

Turkish Historians Discuss Memoirs

As stated earlier, the memoirs of Captain Sarkis Torossian were translated by Ayhan Aktar and published in Turkish in 2012 under the title Çanakkale’den Filistin Cephesine. According to the editor, a Bilgi University (Istanbul) profes-sor, the official Turkish historiography opted to completely erase the Torossian name from all its records and chose to overlook his rare successes in the Gallipoli campaign, including the sinking of several allied warships, because of the offic-er’s Armenian origins. Still, notwithstanding its bombastic claims, the availability of this book in the Turkish language further revived Ankara’s century-long exis-tential dilemma to finally come to terms with the Armenian genocide. In fact, any Turkish debate on what was officially decreed as a non-issue, helped advance the search for truth even if Turkish historians embarked on a full denial campaign that questioned the authenticity of the memoirs and, worse, wondered whether Torossian existed in the first place.8

To his credit, Professor Aktar initiated a rare debate, which directly dealt with the fate of Christian soldiers who served in the Ottoman army, and what may well have happened to them. Aktar wondered what befell their families as well since, presumably, Christian soldiers had families too. He questioned the official narrative on Gallipoli that concentrated on which ship was sunk at the height of which bat-tles, at the expenses of loyal non-Turkish officers who sacrificed their lives for the Empire, and speculated as to the reasons why officialdom opted for denial. Aktar marveled at how convenient Turkish historians were with mundane discussions, over a particular hill for example or what occurred at a different spot, without any desire on their parts to figure out who were present, and why these folks fought so valiantly. For Aktar just as much as Taner Akçam, the very tone of this debate was ‘downright embarrassing and shameful’, since one could not expect much from ‘a country where even the intellectuals act[ed] like this’, concluding that it was therefore not surprising ‘that the genocide [was and] is a secret and land registries [were and] are classified for national security reasons’ (Akçam 2012).

Of course, Aktar and Akçam confronted other accusations too, although two Sabanci University (Istanbul) scholars, who insisted that the memoirs were fraudu-lent, zinged them most. Professor Halil Berktay, a leading historian born into an intellectual Turkish Communist family as well as a columnist in Taraf, a liberal newspaper, and Professor Hakan Erdem, a specialist on Ottoman slavery and the



Ottoman conscript army, criticized Aktar’s introduction and faulted him for accept-ing Torossian’s description of the Gallipoli battles. Erdem authored a separate book on Torossian that added fuel to the fire and that drew Akçam into the debate as the latter sought family documents to add value to the discussions (Erdem 2012). Both men insisted that no one by the name of Sarkis Torossian existed even if Berktay couched his criticisms on the memoirs rather than the author, allegedly because he, Berktay, respected the putative sorrow of the Armenian nation that arose after the massive but, according to him, ‘forced deportations’. Not every Armenian memoir was based on facts, he opined, which highlighted his dilemma given that Berktay was one of the very few Turkish historians who at least acknowledged that Ottoman Armenians were deported en masse during the First World War.

For his part, Hakan Erdem compared Torossian’s claims with other Turkish sources, asserting that the Captain misrepresented and distorted historical events. Erdem avowed that Torossian compared himself with T.E. Lawrence, a British intelligence officer, though that was not the case (see below). Furthermore, Erdem insisted, Torossian made up numerous references that were Orientalist in nature, catering to American tastes that were supposedly attracted by exotic harem scenes in the 1920s. This too was not the case as any reader can determine by reading From Dardanelles to Palestine. In fact, there were so many Erdem claims— including that Torossian did not graduate from the military academy, that he did not fight in the battles he described, and that he emigrated to the United States in 1916 (not 1920)—that one lost all perspective in the skewed debates that followed.

As described in detail on the Akçam webpages, Professor Aktar responded in a series of articles published in Taraf, while Akçam assembled original documents that refuted the above assertions. Indeed, official American immigration and labor department papers confirmed that Torossian entered the United States on December 23, 1920. Sarkis Torossian’s granddaughter, Louise Shreiber, gave Akçam two original Ottoman documents that pertained to war medals awarded to her grand father, and that were reproduced in the book although these could now be inde pendely corroborated. Naturally, critics doubted that Enver Pasha’s signature was authentic, and opined that a stamp of the 21st Army Corps Command could have been easily forged. Unless Torossian was also a thief and somehow managed to acquire the stamp, it was difficult to know how he could have acquired such a tool, provided that he existed in the first place. Moreover, the amount of detail regarding various battles, along with the maps that he drew of Gallipoli, confirmed that such minutiae could only come from a military man even if desk-bound ‘experts’—alleged scholars who promoted denial—doubted his sincerity.

What was even more problematic was the fact that Torossian included 17 photographs in the book, 13 of which depicted the author in military uniform on different battlefronts. One showed him wearing a rebel’s attire after he joined Armenian guerrillas at the end of the war while still another, taken with US Army officers, showed him in civilian clothes. The most interesting photographs were those of his brothers, Sergeant Parsegh Torossian and Corporal Aram Torossian, both of whom wore French Foreign legion uniforms. There was even a photo with



his sister, Bayzar, at the Tal Halaf Concentration Camp that, ironically, includes five other Ottoman soldiers. One must truly ask how the Berktay/Erdem versions can explain these photographs. Did the diabolical Torossian scrounge Ottoman military uniforms to have his photographs taken simply to pretend that he was on various fronts, or was this a fresh conspiracy concocted by American, French or Arab intelligence services to portray him as a hero? Did he bribe others to pose for, and with him all to mount an elaborate propaganda scheme?

Finally, and it was crucial to address this point too, why go through all the trouble to deny that Christian soldiers served in the Ottoman army? Even if Torossian was a fictitious character, as Professor Burhan Sayilir at the 18 March University affirmed, what about Lieutenant Migirdic Efendi, who apparently served with the Ottoman Army in the Çanakkale Fortified Area Command, Lieutenant Arakil Efendi, or even Lieutenant Karabet Efendi, to name just these three who appeared in various Turkish sources? (Sayılır 2012a).9

What Happened to These Christian Officers?

While it may be a difficult task to embark upon, it behooves leading intellectuals in contemporary Turkey to ask themselves the fate that befell Christian soldiers in the Ottoman army, and whether any of them or their families were annihilated. How can Turkey address what occurred on its soil a hundred years ago without touching upon this critical subject? How well has the denial policy served Ankara and, more impor-tant, what kind of an impact has it left on Turkish society at large as it continued to hone its pro-Western credentials without coming to terms with what ailed it?

Truth be told, there were many Arakils, Karabets, Arams, and Zohrabs who engaged in battle ‘for’ the Ottoman army at Çanakkale, not just Sarkis Torossian, fighting to defend the Empire at a time when their families were being deported and killed. In fact, and in addition to Armenian soldiers, Arab units were also deployed at Gallipoli which altered the purely ‘Turkish victory’ narrative that will, in 2015, be reawakened by nationalists who wished to monopolize the debate. In fact, few ought to be surprised that Ankara’s response to the 100th Commemoration of the Armenian genocide will be ‘balanced’ with ceremonies that portrayed Çanakkale as a worthy counterpart that illustrated the pain of all those who per-ished there. While Armenians cannot allow the horrible fate that befell them—whose goal was to eradicate the entire nation—to be compared with war battles, there was no need to deny the horror that Ottoman subjects suffered at Gallipoli, for doing so would cheapen the tragedy of the genocide. Yes, nearly a quarter of a mil-lion Ottoman soldiers perished at Gallipoli (along with another quarter million allied troops), but not all of these were Turks. Armenians, Assyrians, Kurds, Greeks, and many Arabs died at Çanakkale too, something that honest Turks recognized and remembered. Many died ‘for’ the Empire even if strong nationalist sentiments sealed their fate under murky conditions. What emerged was the Arab Revolt that, while nurtured by British interests, turned out to be epochal even if knotty.



The Arab Revolt

Much has been written on the Arab Revolt that saw Britain encourage anti- Turkish Arabian tribes rise against a nearly six-centuries-long Ottoman occupation of Arab lands (Provence 2005).10 For nearly a century, individual Arab nationalist elements sought serious reforms that demanded gradual autonomy, the use of the Arabic language rather than Turkish as the medium in both administrative and education circles, and changes in the Ottoman Empire’s strict conscription rules. Inasmuch as the 1908 elections ushered in the Young Turk victory in Constantinople through the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), which at first was a truly popular movement that even saw Armenian participation, it was not long before political clashes emerged after various minority groups clamored for autonomy.11 What created the wedge that could no longer be closed was the CUP’s desire to shed all diplomatic assurances at the height of the First World War, which engulfed much of Europe and most of the Eastern Mediterranean, as pure ethnic national-ism weaved around Turkishness outlined whatever inclusive visions CUP leaders displayed in their public pronouncements. With the spillover effects of the Turkish massacres in the Balkans that recorded over a million dead and that led to another million refugees, minority populations nestled within the Ottoman Empire were no longer protected (Hall 2000, pp. 1–21). Destitute Turkish refugees were resettled in Anatolia that, quickly, led to the Armenian genocide.

War justified fresh atrocities and, in the case of Arab nationalist figures, hundreds if not thousands were arrested, many were tortured, and dozens were routinely executed in Damascus and Beirut. It was in September 1918 that Sarkis Torossian joined the Arab revolt and, in time, commanded nearly 6,000 Arab soldiers that helped liberate Damascus. As stated above, Torossian met Major Nuri-Bey (Nuri Yusuf), then a staff officer from the 14th Ottoman Army Corps, whose cousin was hanged in Damascus just four weeks earlier (Torossian 1947, pp. 126–131). It was also in Palestine that Captain Sarkis Torossian came into contact with T.E. Lawrence, who earned the status of a legendary figure as Lawrence of Arabia.

Lawrence of Arabia

T.E. Lawrence (1888–1935) was certainly a complicated individual and definitely a lot more than a mere paymaster as Torossian wrote in his memoirs. According to the Armenian, Colonel Lawrence lugged ‘the bag of British gold far behind the lines’, when he was in the thick of battle. ‘We called him in Arabic “Khawajah al-Masari”, the paymaster’, he affirmed, adding: ‘In fact, he was both paymaster and time clerk, placed there to see that our British Imperialist masters were getting a full day’s work’ (Torossian 1947, p. 19).12 While less than complimentary, Torossian was not the only individual not taken in by T.E. Lawrence’s charms. George Antonius, the author of the seminal The Arab Awakening, met with the



colonel in London during a 1920–1921 visit, and conversed for several hours with the legendary spy. One observer concluded that Antonius ‘was singularly unim-pressed and came away with the feeling that this British officer had no compre-hension of how egregiously London had reneged on its wartime promises of independence for the Arabs’ (Bird 2010, p. 38).

Be that as it may, Lawrence despised Ottoman misrule and contemplated the acquisition of Ottoman-administered lands, as soon as the inter-Entente imperial rivalries ended. Of course, Lawrence became a renowned figure, referred to as ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ on account of his willingness to blend in, and otherwise earned rare accolades, although few ought to deny that the legend included liberal doses of what can generously be termed as ‘successful fabrications’. Suffice it to say that while there were many foreign officers who left their marks on the Arab Revolt, there was no one like T.E. Lawrence, a young officer who took his job and himself quite seriously.

It must be emphasized that Lawrence first set out alone on a three-month walk-ing tour of crusader castles in Ottoman Syria during the summer of 1909, which came after a similar trip through France’s numerous castles, a few years earlier. Over nearly 1,000 miles (1,600 km), Lawrence familiarized himself with the Levant, learned Arabic, and visited its key cities, including Aleppo, Latakiyyah, and, of course, Damascus. He trekked to Jerusalem and though he did not venture into Arabia in 1909, he instinctively knew that he would return. After he earned a first degree in 1910 at Magdalen College, Oxford, Lawrence embarked on post-graduate research in mediaeval pottery though he quickly accepted an offer to become a practicing archaeologist in the Middle East.

In December 1910, he sailed for Beirut, Lebanon, where he enrolled in advanced Arabic courses. Shortly thereafter, he settled on his archaeological work on the excavations at Carchemish, near Jerablus in northern Syria, where he worked under David G. Hogarth and R. Campbell Thompson of the British Museum. Jerablus was near an important crossing on the Baghdad Railway that went through Aleppo and it was while working at Carchemish that Lawrence became interested in military questions. It was also at this time that he first met Gertrude Bell, one of the few women who influenced him, and the person that created the modern State of Iraq.

Between 1911 and the outbreak of the First World War, Lawrence returned to the Levant at least twice, and was co-opted by the British military in January 1914, ostensibly as an archaeological smokescreen for a British military survey of the Negev Desert in Palestine, then a growing concern. The mapping of the desert, to which Lawrence contributed and that identified the water sources, was deemed important for the British military as the latter anticipated an Ottoman attack on Egypt in the event of war. As an ‘archeologist’, he traveled widely, visited ‘Aqabah, Petra, and nearly all of the Crusader forts throughout Syria. In October 1914, that is, three months after the August 1914 start of the First World War, he was commissioned and immediately posted to the intelli-gence staff in Cairo.13



Torossian and Lawrence

For the purposes of what Torossian wrote, Lawrence perceived Armenians and Arabs as equally useful elements to advance British Imperial interests, to end Ottoman rule in a pincer movement. It was worth noting that at Jerablus, where Lawrence lived for three summers ostensibly as the paymaster on a British Museum archeological site, he certainly witnessed Ottoman misrule. In fact, he became very familiar with locals who shared their views with the British ‘ archeologist’. Of course, the astute future Colonel carefully transformed these insights into an anti-Turkish plank, which he pitched to his superiors in Cairo at the right time. Consequently, it would not be an error to imply that Lawrence used the Arab Revolt for revenge and, perhaps, even hoped to liberate Cilicia although events on the ground altered his calculations.

In the event, Lawrence’s knowledge of what occurred in the Levant was impeccable, as reported in his voluminous correspondence. One interesting encounter with an Ottoman officer revealed his true sentiments and his non- paymaster writ. On April 29, 1916, Lawrence, Colonel Edward Beach (head of the Intelligence Staff of the Indian Expeditionary Forces), and Captain Aubrey Herbert (Chief of Naval Intelligence in Mesopotamia and the Persian Gulf), all attached to the Cairo Military Intelligence Unit, were sent to Kut al-Amarah (in current Iraq) to negotiate with the Commander of the 4th Ottoman Army, Khalil Pasha, in the aftermath of a major battle that pitted the English against the Ottomans. Khalil Pasha, a nephew of Enver Pasha, wanted river steamers to transport English prisoners to Baghdad, and even promised to return them after-ward, though the team negotiated a price for the liberation of Kut civilians (£1,000,000). As the men haggled details over a lavish meal, and in a moment of self-ingratiation, Khalil Pasha apparently said: ‘After all gentlemen, our interests as Empire builders are much the same as yours. There is nothing that need stand between us’, to which Herbert replied: ‘Only a million dead Armenians’ (Aldington 1955, p. 150).14 The meeting ended promptly but, over the years, the quotation migrated from Herbert to Lawrence to further enhance the latter’s legendary reputation.15

To Destroy Arab and Armenian Nationalisms

Notwithstanding British machinations that sealed London’s reputation throughout the Arab World, Lawrence honed his numerous ideas for Lord Kitchener. He pro-posed an ‘Alexandretta Landing’ contingency plan to split the Empire, which sounded attractive, even if few understood the impact such a plot would have on the CUP, which desperately wished to strangulate Arab and Armenian national-isms. As a proto-Bolshevik party whose behavior was nothing more than a Turkish style rehearsal of the eventual Bolshevik takeover of the Tsar’s domain, CUP officials coordinated with German counterparts starting in February 1914, after it



quickly became clear that the party had no interest to introduce any of the reforms it allegedly championed.16 Indeed, the CUP’s goal was to de-Ottomanize the Empire, as its leaders worked hard to Turkify it. Miraculously, CUP minions quickly welcomed the offer to end their Arab and Armenian nationalist ‘prob-lems’, namely to organize population exchanges, which proved to be a clever rehearsal for Lenin in 1917 (Balakian 2009, pp. 23–24).

Lawrence harbored medieval fantasies to deliver native people from Turkish control, and though his ‘Alexandretta Landing’ proposal was a personal wish to gain the upper hand on strategic objectives, its natural progression—were it to be implemented—could very well have resulted in a Russian occupation of Constantinople alongside France and Britain. In the event, those plans failed but the CUP’s desire to Turkify Ottoman society endured, with devastating consequences for minority populations. One of the more intriguing episodes of such preferences occurred between Karekin Pasdermadjian, better known under his nom de guerre as Armen Garo, and the Ottoman Minister of the Interior as well as a member of the Triumvirate that ruled during the war, Talaat Pasha.

Garo, a distinguished leader of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF) and the first ambassador to the United States from an independent Armenia in 1918, was a lifelong activist from Zaytun who, on August 26, 1896, organized the attack on the Ottoman Bank that earned him both support and wrath. During a July 1914 meeting with Talaat Pasha to discuss the reopening of a closed newspa-per, an existential exchange raised fundamental questions in Garo’s mind who, for several hours, listened without saying much. Intrigued by the silence, Garo elic-ited the following Talaat query: ‘Garo, why haven’t you said anything tonight’, to which the Armenian responded: ‘What shall I say, when I can see distinctly that you have become so arrogant in your recent successes that you are trying to toy with us.’ Naturally, Talaat protested, though Garo added a devastating rejoinder when he affirmed: ‘your adopted course will lead the Ottoman Empire into an abyss. Intoxicated from your recent successes, you are carried away by a [sic] megalomania, imagining yourselves to be Napoleons and Bismarcks.’ ‘I am Birmarck’, Talaat apparently interrupted with a sly smile, but Garo’s following comments—that deserve to be read and reread with utmost attention—illustrated the vast gulf that separated Ottoman citizens:

Yes, you are and you are badly mistaken in so thinking. All of you are a collection of ignoramuses, unable to understand whither you are leading this empire. You want proof? Was it not you who just a short while ago told [Arshak] Vramian [an Ottoman parliamentarian as well as ARF central committee member] that you would turkify the Kurds? How? By virtue of which of your cultural gifts? If you knew anything of history, you would not speak such absurdities. You forget that you Turks came to our land five or six hundred years ago, and before your arrival many other nations have come and gone over our and [the] Kurds’ heads—Persians, Romans, Arabs, and the Byzantines. Since none of them could assimilate the Kurds, how will you? …



As for our cause, you are not sincere. You think you will lull us to sleep with your prom-ises and in addition to create such political-economic conditions as to empty Armenia of Armenians, so that you will be rid of the Armenian question once and for all. This is the second proof of your ignorance. (Garo 1990, pp. 190–191)

The Garo monologue and the Torossian memoirs avowed that Armenians opposed the Turkification policy of the Porte that, for all practical purposes, sealed the fate of all minorities in the Empire, including Arabs, Armenians, and Kurds. As subsequent events demonstrated, and after April 24, 1915, the progressive Republican American President Theodore Roosevelt (1901–1909) failed to per-suade President Woodrow Wilson to declare war on Turkey. Wilson dithered, as his closest political advisors displayed classic confusion and reluctance to engage, allegedly because so little was actually known of what occurred in far away spots. Many argued that nearly $400 million worth of missionary property would be at risk, not to mention additional complications with the budding Palestinian Jewish community, which could have been decimated like the Armenians (see Kennedy 2008, p. 3).

Similar pressures emerged in Europe as well, when the Chief of the Imperial German Military Command, General Erich von Falkenhayn, ‘the Blood-Miller of Verdun’, recommended to his Foreign Minister in late 1914 to sue for peace on the Eastern Front because he concluded that a two-front war was unwinnable (Foley 2005, pp. 56–81). Ironically, when Wilson entered the Great War in 1917, he was still not ready to declare war on Turkey, which was safely nestled in the Axis camp. In fact, leading Western powers, led by the United States, failed to recog-nize the Armenian Genocide, then as now, and, for that matter, it was no accident that the US and Israel—along with Turkey—have not recognized the Armenian Genocide because they did not take Armenian nationalism into genuine consideration. Despite such drawbacks, the fate of Armenian and Arab national-isms intertwined, as the two peoples found solace in core values.

Conclusion

Were it not for strong Arab nationalist movements that mobilized hundreds of intellectuals throughout Syria—today’s Syria and Lebanon—it would be safe to conclude that CUP officials in the Ottoman Empire would have probably achieved their goal to annihilate the Armenian Nation. Moreover, and throughout the past century, Armenians preserved some of their own autonomy by becoming full part-ners in the national politics of several Arab countries, especially in Lebanon, a unique home away from home that granted Armenians unprecedented political rights, first etched in the National Charter, then sealed in the Constitution, includ-ing the post-Civil War Ta’if Accords (Migliorino 2008).

Consequently, it is safe to conclude that without Arab nationalism, or pan-Arabism, and without the Arab revolt, Armenian nationalism would probably not



have survived or, if it did, it would have been assimilated into larger schemes. In short, Armenians owed much to the Arab peoples who sheltered them in times of need and, something that was often neglected but worth repeating as the nation commemorated a tragic centennial, allowed the nation to thrive without the threat of assimilation.

Appendix

The edict (Figure 1A) issued by the Sharif Husayn bin `Ali, calls on Arabs to protect Armenians not only because the Hashemite leadership loathed Ottoman behaviour, but also for humanitarian purposes. It is one of the best pieces of evidence of genuine Arab commit-ments to the Armenian Nation. The document, apparently written on 18 April 1918 and addressed to Arab governors and chieftains, was first reproduced in a study that focused on

Figure 1A. Edict issued by the Sharif Husayn bin `Ali, dated 18 April 1918 calling on Arabs to protect Armenians.

Source: Margaryan (2013).



the problems faced by Armenians in Syria after the Genocide, and ordered everyone to protect and assist Armenian refugees. See Margaryan (2013).

Notes

1. It is not the purpose of this introduction to overlook the significant losses of Turkish officers and soldiers who fought before and during World War I even if the focus here is on the fate that befell Armenians. For two solid background books, see Kinross (1977) and McMeekin (2010). See also Kansu (1997) and Walker (1980).

2. For the Turkish edition of the book, see Torossian (2012). 3. For rare insights on Arab views of the Ottoman Empire, see Masters (2013, especially

pp. 3–19). 4. The document, apparently written on April 18, 1918 and addressed to Arab governors

and chieftains, was first reproduced in a study that focused on the problems faced by Armenians in Syria after the genocide, and ordered everyone to protect and assist Armenian refugees. See Margaryan (2013).

5. The awards are reproduced in Torossian (1947), facing page 1. See also Akçam (2013). 6. In Turkish, the term genocide is soykırım although an equally useful term is kıtal,

which translates as ‘massacres’ or more correctly as ‘mass killings’, words that need to receive wider use by the country’s scholars. In time, and hopefully sooner rather than later, Turkish society will come to grips with its own history, both to heal itself and to render justice. It will be up to a new generation of Turkish scholars to investigate what their Ottoman ancestors perpetrated, explain that state of mind to a nation programed to deny and, gradually, confront what is universally acknowledged as factual, based on irrefutable evidence. For detailed discussions, see Bloxham (2005). See also Ahmad (2010), Göçek (2007), and Akçam (2004, 2006).

7. It may be useful to point out that a significant new movement has recently emerged in Turkey amongst the grandchildren of the republic’s ‘forgotten Armenians’. See Çetin (2004). An English version of this dramatic but sober volume, with an introduction by Ureen Freely, was published as My Grandmother: A Memoir. See also Altınay and Çetin (2014).

8. The Turkish–German historian and sociologist Taner Akçam—who holds the Robert Aram and Marianne Kaloosdian and Stephen and Marion Mugar Professorship in Arme-nian Genocide Studies at the Strassler Family Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts in the United States—posted the high-lights of this debate on his webpage. As one of the first Turkish academics to acknowl-edge and openly discuss the Armenian Genocide, Akçam provided key refutations, based on original documents that are all available on his internet site. See Taner Akçam, ‘Sarkis Torossian Debate’, at http://www.tanerakcam.com/debates/sarkis-torossian-debate/

9. Sayılır further maintained that there were no archival records containing the name ‘Captain Sarkis Torossian’, and that during the allied naval assaults, there was only one Ottoman–Armenian officer, a Lieutenant named Migirdic Efendi, serving with the Ottoman Army in the Çanakkale Fortified Area Command. He added that other Ottoman– Armenian officers referred to in Ottoman archival materials during the Gallipoli Campaign, included Lieutenant Arakil Efendi and Lieutenant Karabet Efendi. See Sayılır (2012b).

10. See also Antonius (1946), Tamari (2011), Masters (2013), Hathaway (2008) with con-tributions by Karl Barbir, and Makdisi (2000).



11. For a full discussion of the CUP, see Ahmad (2010).12. In the original, paymaster is defined as ‘Havaja-el-Masra’ which is colloquial Turkish.13. There are dozens of books on T.E. Lawrence that attempt to explain his enigmatic

life. For a sample of near-hagiographies, see Brown and Cave (1988), Graves (1927), Mack (1976), Nutting (1961), and Thomas (1924). The first critical study on Lawrence appeared in 1955 and created quite a controversy, including attempts to suppress its publication, ostensibly because its author dared to raise unorthodox questions (see Aldington 1955). Aldington’s difficulties with his publisher, reviewers, and senior gov-ernment officials were brilliantly discussed in a highly readable work (see Crawford 1998).

14. Attributed, in turn, to Graves (1927, p. 87).15. For the jump from Herbert to Lawrence, see James (2008, p. 147).16. Field Marshall Lord Horatio Herbert Kitchener (1850–1916) became the Secretary for

War at the beginning of First World War and foresaw a long engagement. That was why he organized the largest volunteer army that Britain had seen up until that time, even if his warnings did not prevent shortfalls. He was killed in 1916 when a German mine sank the warship taking him to negotiations in Russia although his January 1915 warnings to France concern the Torossian book. At the time, Kitchener believed that the Western Front could not be breached, which was why he looked with favor to Lawrence’s recommendations to organize amphibious landings on the Baltic or North Sea Coast, or against Turkey. In an effort to find a way to relieve pressure on the Western front, Lord Kitchener proposed an invasion of Alexandretta with Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC), along with Indian troops, though Lawrence wanted to add Arab and Armenian irregulars to the party. Alexandretta was an area with a large Christian population and was the strategic centre of the Ottoman Empire’s railway network, whose capture would have cut the empire in two, which was pre-cisely what Lawrence wanted to accomplish. The proposal was dropped in favor of the Gallipoli Campaign, an idea attributed to Winston Churchill, with its devastating con-sequences (see Neillands 2006, pp. 165–175). For an examination of the Alexandretta Landing from Lawrence’s perspective, see Anderson (2013, pp. 95–99, 141–147).

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how the armenian genocide forced a loyal ottoman officer to espouse the arab revolt

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