Van riot

Armenians digging trenches

Armenian refugees south of Van

The uprising of Van ( Armenian Վանի Հերոսամարտ Wani Herosamart , Turkish Van Direnişi , resistance of Van ' ) was an attempt by Ottoman Armenians to defend themselves against the massacre of the Ottoman Empire against the Armenians in Vilayet Van . Van was one of the six Armenian vilayets at the time . The Ottoman government used the Armenian resistance as a pretext for deporting the Armenians throughout the Ottoman Empire. The decision to deport and exterminate the Armenians was taken before the uprising.

Rafael de Nogales corroborates the reports of other contemporary witnesses that the Armenian position at Van was defensive and an act of resistance to the massacre. The uprising, which took place mainly in the city of Van , was a rare case in which the Armenians fought against the armed forces of the Ottoman Empire.

The fighting lasted from April 19 to May 17, 1915, until the Ottoman army withdrew as the army of the Russian Empire approached. It was affiliated with the Armenian Revolutionary Federation ( Dashnaks ), the Social Democratic Huntschak Party ( Huntschak ) and the Democratic-Liberal Party ( Armenakan ).

The uprising was led by the Armenian Aram Manukjan ; the Ottoman 3rd Army commanded Jevdet Bey , governor of the province of Van, Halil Bey , the commander of the gendarmerie , Köprülü Kâzım Bey , lieutenant colonel and the Venezuelan adventurer Rafael de Nogales . The strength of the Armenian fedayeen was 1,300 men, while the 3rd Army had over 5,000 soldiers. A total of 55,000 civilians were killed, most of them Armenians.

In the course of the attempted resistance of the Armenians in the context of the Caucasus Front , the Ottoman parliament passed the Tehcir law , in the course of which first the Armenians in Constantinople and later all Armenians throughout the empire were to be deported.

literature

Henry Morgenthau : Ambassador Morgenthau's Story . Doubleday, Page & Company, 1917 (English, online in Google Book Search).
Erickson, Edward J .: Ordered to Die. A History of the Ottoman Army in the First World War . Greenwood Publishing Group, 2001, ISBN 0-313-31516-7 (English).
Mesrob K. Krikorian: Armenians in the Service of the Ottoman Empire, 1860-1908 . Routledge, 1978, ISBN 0-7100-8564-8 (English).
Accounts of Armenian survivors from Van. ( Memento from April 12, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
Peter Balakian: The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America's Response. HarperCollins, New York 2004, ISBN 0-06-055870-9 .
Christopher J. Walker: Armenia: The Survival of a Nation. Palgrave Macmillan, London 1990.
Richard G. Hohanissian: The Armenian People from Ancient to Modern Times. St. Martin's Press, New York 1997.
Justin McCarthy , et al .: The Armenian Rebellion at Van. University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City 2006, ISBN 978-0-87480-870-4 .
Taner Akçam : A Shameful Act. The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility. Metropolitan Books, New York 2006, ISBN 0-8050-7932-7 .

Individual evidence

↑ The General Headquarters used this term on August 8th / 9th. May 1915, Ali İhsan Sâbis , Birinci Dünya Harbi , 2nd cilt, Nehir Yayınları, ISBN 975-551-067-2 , p. 434 (Turkish).
↑ The debates of Meclis-i Vükelâ from 15. – 17. August 1915 were recorded with the title Van İhtilali ve Katl-i Amı ( Van Revolution and Massacre ), dated 1 Zilkade 1933/10. September 1915, Stanford J. Shaw , Ezel Kural Shaw: History of the Ottoman Empire and modern Turkey. Volume 2, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1977, ISBN 978-0-521-29166-8 , p. 338.
^ Peter Balakian : The Burning Tigris. Harper Collins Publishers Inc., 2003, p. 208
↑ S. Taner Akçam: The Van uprising deserves to be examined separately, for regardless of the fact that it took place after the secret deportation and extermination decisions were made….
^ Richard G. Hovannisian: The Armenian People from Ancient to Modern Times. (= Foreign Dominion to Statehood: The Fifteenth Century to the Twentieth Century. Volume 2), Palgrave, 1997, ISBN 978-0-312-10169-5 , p. 251.
^ Henry Morgenthau: The "Revolution" at Van. In: Ambassador Morgenthau's Story . Doubleday, Page & Company, 1917, p. 227.
^ Peter Balakian: The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America's Response. HarperCollins, New York 2004, p. 207.

[1] The General Headquarters used this term on August 8th / 9th. May 1915, Ali İhsan Sâbis , Birinci Dünya Harbi , 2nd cilt, Nehir Yayınları, ISBN 975-551-067-2 , p. 434 (Turkish).

[2] The debates of Meclis-i Vükelâ from 15. – 17. August 1915 were recorded with the title Van İhtilali ve Katl-i Amı ( Van Revolution and Massacre ), dated 1 Zilkade 1933/10. September 1915, Stanford J. Shaw , Ezel Kural Shaw: History of the Ottoman Empire and modern Turkey. Volume 2, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1977, ISBN 978-0-521-29166-8 , p. 338.

[3] Peter Balakian : The Burning Tigris. Harper Collins Publishers Inc., 2003, p. 208

[4] S. Taner Akçam: The Van uprising deserves to be examined separately, for regardless of the fact that it took place after the secret deportation and extermination decisions were made….

[5] Richard G. Hovannisian: The Armenian People from Ancient to Modern Times. (= Foreign Dominion to Statehood: The Fifteenth Century to the Twentieth Century. Volume 2), Palgrave, 1997, ISBN 978-0-312-10169-5 , p. 251.

[6] Henry Morgenthau: The "Revolution" at Van. In: Ambassador Morgenthau's Story . Doubleday, Page & Company, 1917, p. 227.

[7] Peter Balakian: The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America's Response. HarperCollins, New York 2004, p. 207.