Western Armenia

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The six Vilâyets of the Ottoman Empire, also known as "Western Armenia", are shown in light green
Distribution of the Armenian population in Turkish Armenia, Kurdistan and Transcaucasia. Map by A. Supan after Cuinet, Selenoy and v. Seydlitz Stieler Hand atlas, 1896. Only the Sanjak with the darkest Color Bet (violet) had an Armenian majority.
Turkey in Asia with Armenia major or Turcomania . Herman Moll, 1736
Western border of the Democratic Republic of Armenia , drawn by US President Woodrow Wilson's arbitral award 1920. This territory, provided for in the Treaty of Sèvres 1920, is also known as Wilson's Armenia .

Western Armenia ( Armenian Արեւմտեան Հայաստան Arewmdian Hajasdan in Western Armenian variant; Արևմտյան Հայաստան Arewmtjan Hajastan in Eastern Armenian ; Turkish Batı Ermenistan ) is the historical name for the western parts of the Armenian highlands , which are now in Turkey , and their areas, which were also known as Armenia ( Greater Armenia and Lesser Armenia ) belonged to the Ottoman Empire since the 16th century and formed the western part of the traditional settlement area of ​​the Armenians until the Armenian genocide from 1915 to 1918 . A distinction must be drawn between the areas of the former Kingdom of Little Armenia in Cilicia, which have also been populated by Armenians since the 11th century . Sometimes "Western Armenia" also refers to the Armenians living in the former Ottoman Empire. In the Armenian diaspora , the homeland of western Armenia, which was lost through genocide, was an important point of reference in the culture of remembrance , especially until the establishment of the independent Republic of Armenia - which did not include any parts of western Armenia Republic of Armenia 1991 the use of the term Western Armenia in German is largely limited to historical contexts.

Meanings of the term western Armenia

Tessa Hofmann provides for " Eastern Armenia Historical and politically is to understand the former Turkish Armenia and Eastern Armenia Russian Armenia under Western Armenia, while philological dialect boundary between the: two definitions" and "Western Armenia" ostarmenischen and Western Armenian language at about Van is to be set . Mihran Dabag , on the other hand, began with the conquest of the Bagratid metropolis Ani in 1064, after its destruction by the Seljuks under Alp Arslan, the development of the former Armenian kingdom was determined by "an increasingly culturally divergent division into eastern and western Armenia" be. Dabag defines “Eastern Armenia as the history of an Armenian territory under initially Persian , then Russian rule; Western Armenia as the history of the Armenian settlement areas west of the Ararat (under Ottoman rule) and a widely dispersed diaspora “[...]. Levon Abrahamian describes the split between the Armenians of Eastern and Western Armenia as the result of a permanent division of Armenia between two great powers, which was rightly attributed to the division of Armenia between the Persia of the Sassanids and the Eastern Roman Empire in 385/387 and with the time before Genocide ended when Armenia was divided between the Russian and Ottoman empires.

Western Armenia in the Armenian Diaspora

Abrahamian makes it clear that the genocide of the Armenians led to a further division of the Armenians into a still existing homeland based on Eastern Armenia and a diaspora based on Western Armenia. The division among the Armenians was deepened by the life of the Eastern Armenians under socialism and the Western Armenian diaspora under capitalism. Vartan Matiossian meant by "Western Armenia" (Western Armenia) the "Armenian people" ( joghovurd , people ), called "core" (core) through the Great Genocide "exploded" and its remnants since 1915 as Armenian Diaspora ( anjoghov , non- reunited ) are spread all over the world. This Armenian diaspora, like the Jewish diaspora that has existed since the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD, is a direct result of destruction. In contrast to the Jews, Levon Abrahamian points out that only the Armenians from western Armenia (and not those from eastern Armenia) lost their homeland and that they retained the Armenian Apostolic Church as a kind of replacement for the lost statehood, whereby the highest priest of the Armenians, the Catholicos , only changed his title and did not lose his function.

According to Hovhannes Hovhannisyan, in the historical memory of the Armenian diaspora - also funded by the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Daschnag) - it is not the territory of the present-day Republic of Armenia or the former Soviet Armenia , but "Western Armenia" the motherland, which is still an internal connection between the diaspora -Armenians with the Republic of Armenia more difficult. During the Soviet era, this was also reflected in the strict demarcation of the Catholic of Cilicia as a representative of the Western Armenians in the diaspora from the Catholic of the Holy See of St. Etchmiadzin and All Armenians, whom it accused of serving the atheistic state without faith. This split began to loosen with the visits of the Etschmiadzin Catholicos Wasgen I to the diaspora from 1956. The independence of Armenia in 1991 and the subsequent rapprochement between the Catholics of Cilicia and Etschmiadzin under Karekin Sarkissian as well as the strong solidarity of the diaspora after the Spitak earthquake in 1988 and the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict with the establishment of the de facto Republic of Arzach were, according to Hovhannisyan, essential for a contrast today Recognition of the state of Armenia, located in Eastern Armenia, as the mother country, given too early. Using the example of the Armenian diaspora in Greece, Susanne Schwalgin worked out how the hometowns of the survivors of the genocide, located in the Ottoman Empire, were the reference point in their stories and how these were described as "Western Armenia" in the historiography of the diaspora. After 1991, however, the “homeland” as a reference point shifted from the lost “Western Armenia” to the national state of Armenia, which has now become a reality.

Western Armenians in today's Armenia

Already after the incorporation of the former Persian Eastern Armenia into the Russian Empire at the beginning of the 19th century there was a strong migration of Armenians from Western Armenia to Russian Armenia. During the Great Genocide at the beginning of the 20th century, other western Armenians found refuge in eastern Armenia, but many of them still harbored the hope of returning to a liberated homeland. The Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic pursued an active policy of “repatriating” Armenians from the diaspora from the 1920s to the 1970s, but especially after the Second World War . The immigrants included Levon Ter-Petrosyan, who later became President of the Republic of Armenia, who was born as a Syrian Armenian in Aleppo . While in the case of the Armenians from Iran Abrahamian speaks of a return to the homeland of their forefathers that can actually be described in this way, in his words the "repatriation" of the remaining diaspora Armenians is not a return to their actual homeland, which was Western Armenia, but to Soviet Armenia as its “symbolic replacement”. A union of East Armenians and West Armenians in Soviet Armenia has already taken place, whereby cultural differences in the population of Armenia can be recognized almost to this day. After all, western Armenian music and dances from Sasun were very successful at music festivals in Yerevan in the 1970s. Today these differences take a back seat to the contrasts with the Armenian refugees and displaced persons from Azerbaijan in Armenia.

Historical aspects

After the fall of the Cilician capital Sis in 1375, the entire Armenian settlement area was under "total rule of Islam". Since the 16th century, Armenia was divided into a western Armenia ruled by the Ottomans and an eastern Armenia ruled by the Persians . The Ottoman-Persian border has not changed since the end of the fighting between the Persian Safavids and Ottomans for supremacy over Armenia in the early 17th century. The Armenians became a very strong minority in what was still known as "Western Armenia" or "Turkish Armenia". The "Western Armenian community" subject like the refugees from the Inquisition Ottoman Jews the millet system , which is characterized by Dabag as "tolerance" principle while doing other authors sometimes of a "tolerance system" talk. Friedrich Heyer describes the victorious Sultan as "good willing and helpful towards the Armenians in order to establish a balance between the Christian peoples of his empire", and emphasizes the rights and privileges of the Armenians under the Sultan, which is why the Armenians - "faithful nation of faith" ( millet-i sadika) - were loyal to the Ottoman Empire until the 19th century. It was not until the Russian expansion and the increasing loss of power of the Ottoman Empire that the Armenians were seen as a danger. Especially after the Russo-Turkish War , when parts of Turkish Armenia around the city of Kars came under Russian rule in 1878 , the situation of the Armenians in Turkey deteriorated . In the last decades of Ottoman rule, the number of Armenians, who mainly lived in the Six Vilayets , also known as Western Armenia , fell through massacres. After the Young Turks came to power in 1908, the Armenians were no longer regarded as millet-i sadika . According to Heyer, Diyarbakir, Bitlis, Van, Musch, Erzerum, Sivas and Elâzig were "Armenian provinces". From April 24, 1915, during the First World War , the “ genocide of the defenseless Armenians ” finally occurred , in which “over one and a half million people” from western Armenia died. At the suggestion of US President Woodrow Wilson , the Treaty of Sèvres in 1920 provided for an Armenia with a large part of western Armenia, but this did not materialize after the Turkish victories in the Greco-Turkish and Turkish-Armenian wars . With the Treaty of Kars in 1922 between Soviet Russia and Turkey , which was newly founded as a nation-state , an Armenia with the historical settlement areas of the Armenians in the former Ottoman Empire became obsolete. Since then there have been no Armenian parishes and no Armenian churches used as such in the former Western Armenia. While most of the Armenians from here either died or left the country, the Armenians who stayed behind and their descendants live with a more or less hidden Armenian identity as crypto-Armenians .

No longer common use today

Tessa Hofmann points out that the genocide of the Armenians in 1915–1918 "bloody wiped out the borders of the Armenian highlands" and "even abroad, the name Eastern Anatolia replaced Western or Turkish Armenia".

literature

  • Friedrich Heyer: The Church of Armenia: A People's Church between East and West. Evangelisches Verlagswerk, Stuttgart 1978.
  • Levon Abrahamian: Armenian identity in a changing world. Mazda Publishers, Costa Mesa (California) 2006.
  • Gerard J. Libaridian: The Ultimate Repression: The Genocide of the Armenians, 1915-1917. In: Isidor Wallimann, Michael N. Dobkowski (Eds.): Genocide and the Modern Age: Etiology and Case Studies of Mass Death. Pp. 206-236.
  • Marie-Aude Baronian, Stephan Besser, Yolande Jansen: Diaspora and Memory: Figures of Displacement in Contemporary Literature, Arts and Politics. Rodopi, 2007. ISBN 9789042021297
  • Lorne Shirinian: The Republic of Armenia and the rethinking of the North-American Diaspora in literature. E. Mellen Press, 1992. ISBN 9780773496132
  • Richard G. Hovannisian: The Armenian Genocide: Cultural and Ethical Legacies. Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick (New Jersey) 2008. ISBN 9781412835923
  • Adam Jones: Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction. Routledge, 2013. ISBN 9781134259816

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Tessa Hofmann : Approaching Armenia: Past and Present. 2nd Edition. CH Beck, Munich 2006, p. 11.
  2. ↑ a b Mihran Dabag : Young Turkish Visions and the Armenian Genocide. In: Mihran Dabag, Kristin Platt (Hrsg.): Genozid und Moderne, Volume 1: Structures of collective violence in the 20th century. Leske + Budrich , Opladen 1998. pp. 152–205, here p. 160.
  3. ^ A b Levon Abrahamian: Armenian identity in a changing world. Mazda Publishers, Costa Mesa (California) 2006. pp. 330f.
  4. ↑ Vartan Matiossian: "The Future is Not Coming, The Past is Gone": Some Notes about the Armenian reality in Argentina. In: Barlow Der Mugrdechian (Ed.): Journal of the Society for Armenian Studies (JSAS) Vol. 12 (2001–2002), pp. 11–29, here p. 12. 2003.
  5. ^ Levon Abrahamian: Armenian identity in a changing world. Mazda Publishers, Costa Mesa (California) 2006. p. 326.
  6. ^ Hovhannes Hovhannisyan: Identity, Borders and Religious Belonging: Armenians between Two Spiritual Centers, Etchnmiadzin and Cilicia. In: Alexander Agadjanian (Ed.): Armenian Christianity Today: Identity Politics and Popular Practice. Routledge, London / New York 2016. pp. 125–144, here pp. 130, 133–137.
  7. ↑ Susanne Schwalgin: "In the Ghetto". Processes of localization in the Armenian diaspora of Greece. In: Angelika Eder, Kristina Vagt (eds.): “We are there too!” About life by and with migrants in major European cities. Dölling and Galitz, Munich 2003. pp. 165–188, here p: 173.
  8. ^ Levon Abrahamian: Armenian identity in a changing world. Mazda Publishers, Costa Mesa (California) 2006. pp. 335f.
  9. ^ Friedrich Heyer: The Church of Armenia: A People's Church between East and West. Evangelisches Verlagswerk, Stuttgart 1978. p. 38.
  10. ↑ Mihran Dabag: The Armenian Community in Turkey. Federal Agency for Civic Education, April 9, 2014.
  11. ^ Raymond Kévorkian: Les Armeniens dans l'empire Ottoman à la veille du génocide. Editions d'Art et d'Histoire, Paris 1992. pp. 53-56.
  12. ^ Friedrich Heyer: The Church of Armenia: A People's Church between East and West. Evangelisches Verlagswerk, Stuttgart 1978. pp. 39–41.
  13. ^ Tessa Hofmann: Approaching Armenia: Past and Present. 2nd Edition. CH Beck, Munich 2006, p. 247.
  14. ^ Turkey's Secret Armenians. ( Memento of the original from February 13, 2018 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.al-monitor.com archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Al-Monitor, February 19, 2013.
  15. ↑ Tessa Hofmann: Between Ararat and the Caucasus. A portrait of a small country in five key words. In: Huberta von Voss: Portrait of a Hope. The Armenians. Life pictures from all over the world. P. 24. Hans Schiler Verlag, Berlin 2004. ISBN 9783899300871 .