Pogroms in Azerbaijan and Armenia of 1988-89 As Historical Echo of the 1915 Armenian Genocide

Caspian and Mediterranean seas for centuries long. This area presented a crossroad between East and West. As a result of the geographic location

Armenia wasn’t govern by its own dynasties constantly. The state has experienced direct foreign rule as well as paying fees to the surrounding states. Besides the geography, Armenia had another disadvantage. It was the only Christian state surrounded by Muslim entities, this aspect kept

Armenia apart from others. Such distinct difference referred Armenians as second-class citizens after the Ottoman Empire annexed the territory that had molded ancient and medieval Armenian kingdoms, in the sixteenth century. The Ottoman Empire established on its territory confessional- based Muslim, Jewish, Greek Orthodox, and Armenian millets. Through these establishments the Ottoman administrative system legalized the social inequality within a structure of the society. The millet system enabled

Armenians to preserve their cultural-religious identity, but kept them politically and militarily inefficacious. Armenians didn’t pose any threat onto the multinational, unequal society and retained in accord to certain degree with the dominant Muslim millet as long as they paid the tributes to the government and remained politically inactive.

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries a wind of changes came across the Ottoman Empire and caused external challenges and internal instability. Incapable of competing with the West economically and military, the ruling authority lost a number of provinces and ended up in debt. Such immediate breakdown of law and consequent venality fractured the foundations of Ottoman multinational society. Due the increasing threats to continued existence of the Ottoman Empire, the sultans, under the pressure of Great Britain, launched a program of remodeling that broke away from the traditional sociopolitical theocracy.

The tanzimat period, stretching from 1839 to 1876, was designed to commence theoretical equality of all Ottoman subjects. However, while the decree went into power, the system of millets maintained, and the equality within it correspondingly. During the political internal and external torments Armenians endeavored to uphold and to follow the reforms in order to secure life and property. They had no intentions to develop a task of separation or acquiring independence from the Ottoman Empire.

Then followed the Russian-Turkish War, in which Turkey lost severely.

The military and diplomatic failure of the sultan Abdul-Hamid II attributed to the break away of the most of Balkan provinces. Thus, the attention of the European community was drawn to the “Armenian Question.” However, the fact of European protectorate, explicitly expressed verbally in regard to the domestic policy of the crumbling Ottoman Empire only aggravated the condition of Armenians in Turkey. Armenians’ quest for security and equality resulted in brutal pogroms ordered by Abdul-Hamid, which were carried out by armed Kurdish brigands in almost every province inhabited by

Armenians. The ultimate purpose of Abdul-Hamid wasn’t to exterminate the

Armenian population, but rather to point out that they have to follow the policies of the Ottoman Empire. Particularly, to look up at Europe was a forbidden act. His successors aimed at creating an entirely socionationalistic frame of the state, free from Armenians, rather than just preserving a political status quo.[6] The only way to achieve the goal was to whip out the entire Armenian population from the Ottoman Empire territory.

In early 1913 the Young Turk government was overthrown by its militaristic and nationalistic wing, with Enver, Taalat, and Jemal Pashas in head of it. This threesome involved the country into WWI as the ally ofGermany. Later in 1915 the same government outlined and put into effect a plan for the elimination of Armenians, estimated between two and three millions subjects. The plan was carried out in phases. In April 1915 people represented the Armenian religious, political, educational, and intellectual authority in the Western tradition, variously one thousand individuals, were jailed throughout the entire Empire, and consequently killed within few days. The next phase consisted of liquidation of the young male adult population, which mainly were recruits of the Turkish army. The number approximated 200,000. They were purged through mass burials, incineration, executions and weakness in labor battalions. The leftovers of those who survived those phases were primarily children, women and aged people. All of them were to be deported to distant regions of

Empire. Within six months of deportation half of those who survived first two phases were killed, buried alive or thrown into the sea or the rivers along the way.[7]

The murder of Armenians was characterized like the war against

Entente, as a jihad or holy war. Throughout the Empire it became illegal to assist the survivors. The governmental decree established a penalty for everyone who broke the law, which was to hang those who were helping

Armenians in front of their own house; the house was to be burnt.[8] Yet, history records the removal of some governors from the office for the resistance to the supreme order. Many Kurds and Arabs throughout Empire were saving the refugees. The outcome of the genocide was catastrophic.

Out of two to three million Armenians in Western Armenia, a million and a half perished during the massacres. Thousands of those who escaped the purge and fled to Russian Armenia died because of starvation that had been dwelling in Russia after the WWI. Those Armenians, who converted to Islam and remained within Ottoman Empire borders never regained the status of citizens and lost the ability to retain a sense of religious or national identity. [9]

The history of the massacres in Nagornyi Karabakh and Baku took the following path.