Armenian reform package

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The reform plan for Turkish Armenia 1914

The Armenian reform package was a reform plan proposed by the European powers from 1912 to 1914 in order to put an end to the “hopeless situation” of the “battered Armenians ” in the Ottoman Empire .

This reform plan provided for the establishment of two provinces in Turkish Armenia ( Western Armenia ) under the supervision of two European General Inspectors appointed to monitor Armenian affairs. The inspectors general would occupy the highest position in the six eastern vilayets (provinces) where most of the Armenian population lived. They would reside in Erzurum (Karin) and Van , respectively . The reform package was implemented by law by the Ottoman Empire on February 8, 1914, but abolished on December 16, 1914, shortly after Turkey entered the First World War .

background

The Balkan Wars presented an opportunity for the revival of new plans to improve the conditions in which the Ottoman Armenians had to live. The French , British and Italians sought to limit German influence in the Ottoman Empire, while the Russian government made the Catholic encouraged by Armenia to address the imperial-Ottoman government via the viceroy of the Caucasus in favor of an intervention for reforms in the Armenian-populated Vilayets . This project was prepared by André Mandelstam , the dragoman at the Russian Embassy in Constantinople , and representatives of the Armenian National Assembly . It was fully discussed in Constantinople and finally decided at a meeting of the ambassadors of France , Great Britain and Italy . The project proposed the formation of a single province from the six Vilâyets Vilâyet Erzurum , Van , Bitlis , Diyarbakır , Mamûretül-Aziz ( Elâzığ , Kharpert ) and Sivas under a governor-general who had to be either an Ottoman Christian or a European. This governor general was to be appointed by the great powers for a term of five years. Germany rejected the project and succeeded in pushing through significant changes to the reform package; this included the division of the region into two provinces instead of one.

plan

The Armenian reform package was signed on February 8, 1914 by the Ottoman Empire - represented by Grand Vizier Said Halim Pasha - and Russia. This reform package was supposed to solve the Armenian question .

Louis C. Westenenk, an administrative officer for the Dutch East Indies, and Major Hoff, a major in the Norwegian Army , were elected as the first two inspectors-general. Hoff was in Van when the war broke out while Westenenk prepared to leave for his post in Erzurum.

At the Erzurum Congress , the Ottoman government promised the Armenians even greater autonomy. However, after the reform package was abolished on December 16, 1914, the Armenian genocide occurred the next year .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Davison, Roderic H .: " The Armenian Crisis, 1912-1914 ," The American Historical Review 53 (Apr., 1948), pp. 481-505.
  2. ↑ Armenian : Karapetyan, NV (1981). "Հայկական բարենորոգումների խնդիրը 1912-14 թվականներին" [The Issue of the Armenian Reforms in the Years 1912-14] in History of the Armenian People , ed. Tsatur Aghayan et al. Yerevan: Armenian Academy of Sciences, vol. 6, pp. 520-35.
  3. ^ Richard G. Hovannisian: Armenia on the Road to Independence, 1918 . University of California Press, Berkeley 1967, ISBN 0-520-00574-0 , pp. 38-39 .
  4. ^ Reynolds, Michael A. (2011). Shattering Empires: The Clash and Collapse of the Ottoman Empires, 1908-1918 . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 73-77.
  5. ↑ Şeyhun, Ahmed. "Said Halim and the Armenian Reform Project of 1914," Journal of the Society for Armenian Studies . Vol. 19, No. 2 (2010), pp. 93-108.
  6. ↑ Hovannisian. Armenia on the Road to Independence , p. 39.
  7. ↑ LC Westenek: "Diary Concerning the Armenian Mission," Armenian Review 39 (Spring 1986), pp 29-89.