(pp. 25-29)

In studying the Caucasus and eastern Anatolia, one becomes aware that they can and should be treated as one region, despite political boundaries. Throughout the 100-year period of this study, the histories and the peoples of the Caucasus and eastern Anatolia cannot be understood separately. Economically, socially, linguisti- cally, and religiously the connections among the peoples of the region remained strong well into the 1920s, perhaps beyond.

To understand the closeness of the histories of the peoples of the "Russian South" and "Ottoman East" one has only to consider them by religious groups, rather than by political borders. It is impossible to consider the Anatolian Armenians as if they were not intimately connected to the Armenians of Erivan. Too many migrants crossed from the Ottoman Empire to Russia, too many bishops from the jurisdiction of Istanbul to that of Echmiadzin and back, too many revolutionaries crossed and recrossed the borders for the Armenians to be accurately styled as Turkish Armenians and Russian Armenians in any but a political sense. The same was true of Muslims, especially the Turks and Kurds of the southern Caucasus and eastern Anatolia. Although most Muslim migration was outmigration from the southern Caucasus to eastern Anatolia, there was considerable ongoing migration for purposes of trade, employment, and family. Muslim nomads crossed the political borders freely. New infusions of forced migrants brought news of the Caucasus to their fellow Muslims in the east.

Armenians under Russian and Ottoman rule obviously viewed each other as brothers, no matter their citizenship. The same was true of Muslims. It is doubtful if the concept of citizenship, as opposed to religious affiliation, had taken any great hold in either the Caucasus or eastern Anatolia before the 1920s. In the east, a Caucasian Muslim felt closer to an Anatolian Muslim than to a Caucasian Armenian, just as an eastern Anatolian Armenian affiliated himself with Armenians of the Caucasus, not Anatolian Muslims. For this reason, it is ridiculous to speak of a large group of loyal Muslim subjects of Russia in the Caucasus or loyal Armenian subjects of the Ottoman Empire in eastern Anatolia. Both regions had Muslims and Armenians who were integrated into the political system and could be considered as loyal, even patriotic subjects. Most Armenians and Muslims, however, were peasants or nomads who knew no real affiliation above tribe or village, except their religious affiliation. Their primary loyalty to their own religious groups was proven again and again in the Caucasian and eastern Anatolian wars.

In time of war, the sympathies of Armenians and Muslims emerged openly. There was no doubt as to the loyalty of either group. Despite the fact that some Muslims fought on the side of the Russians, particularly in the Crimean War,[3] and many middle- class Armenians supported the Ottoman government, both Arme- nians and Muslims in the east generally assumed that their place was alongside their coreligionists. This was true in both the Caucasus and eastern Anatolia. In the Caucasus, Muslims responded to Ottoman calls for rebellion against their Russian masters in time of war and fought as guerrillas and regular troops against their Russian masters, as stated by W. E. D. Allen:

[In World War I] In the Valleys of the Coruh and the Oltu-cay there were very mixed elements: Christians (Armenians) predominated in the towns of Artvin, Ardanuch, Ardahan and Oitu, while Muslims were in the majority in the countryside; these Muslims included Groups of Georgian origin, like the Laz and Acars, Turks, remnants of the old Tatar hordes, and Cherkesses who had settled, after 1864, on what was then the Turkish side of the border. Irrespective of their racial origins, all the Muslims proved more or less ready to help the Turks, particularly when they came as an invading army. Thus the Cherkesses of Upper Sarikamis stubbornly defended their stone saklyas by the side of the Turkish askers, and the needy inhabitants of the uplands provided scanty food to the divisions ofHafiz Hakki during their desperate march across the Allahuekber Mountains [in the ill-fated invasion ofthe^south- ern Caucasus].[4]

Prof. Justin McCarthy (from "The Armenian Revolt")

Some Armenians began to act as adjuncts of Russian policy and the Russian army as early as the early 1700s, in the time of Peter the Great. The dependence of Armenians on Russia and their expectations of assistance from that quarter had begun to grow from the first incursions of the Russians into the Caucasus. As far back as the reign of Peter the Great, when they organized a military force to assist the Tsar's invasion of the region,[5] Caucasian Armenians had promised loyalty and support to the Russian tsars. During ihe 1700s and 1800s, Armenian secular and religious officials sup- ported the Russian invasion of the Muslim khanates in the Caucasus and the overthrow of their Muslim rulers. At the same time, Armenians first acted as spies for the Russians against their Muslim overlords, in this case the Persian Empire.[6] When the city of Derbend was under siege by the Russians in 1796, its Armenian residents sent the invaders information on the town's water supply, allowing the Russians to defeat the Khan of Derbend.[7] An Armenian Archbishop, Argutinskii-Dolgorukov, proclaimed publicly (1790s) his hope and belief that the Russians "would free the Armenians from Muslim rule."[8] Armenian subjects of the Persian and Ottoman empires, as well as Armenians living in the Russian Empire, fought on the side of the Russians against Persia and the Ottoman Empire in the 1827-29 wars and the Crimean War.[9]

The continuity of eastern Anatolia and the Caucasus explains much about seemingly spontaneous violence that erupted in both regions. Traditional histories have treated each outburst of eastern Anatolian or Caucasian intercommunal violence as an isolated in- stance. Divorced of their historical and geographic context, the conflicts have only been explainable as outpourings of irrational feelings. Because Armenian attacks on Muslims have seldom been considered (only Muslim attacks on Armenians), it has been easy for commentators to portray the Muslims as savages who occasionally felt the need to kill Christians. In fact, Armenians attacked Muslims just as Muslims attacked Armenians, sometimes without apparent provocation or immediate justification. At times this was an outpouring of irrational hatred, but more usually it arose from an awareness on both sides of their history. Because of that history and because of knowledge of events in the Caucasus and Anatolia, Armenians and Muslims both knew that their fellows had been killing each other in great numbers. They knew that both sides had been forced to flee from the other or die, again in great numbers, and they knew that if intercommunal war came to them, they would suffer the same fate as their coreligionists, unless they defeated their enemies. This is a classic self-fulfilling prophecy—both sides killed because they knew the other side would kill them—and makes perfect sense within this context.

In sum, to understand the history of the enmity between Armenians and Muslims, one must view the Caucasus and eastern Anatolia as a whole, an entire region in which Armenians and Muslims fought for supremacy for 100 years.

RUSSIAN EXPANSION

In many ways, the enmity between Armenians and Muslims had at its base Russian expansion into the Caucasus.

(End of p. 29; From p. 40:)

The Russians had forcibly removed Muslim peoples in order to replace them with Christians. This policy cannot help but have impressed itself upon Muslims who were themselves in the path of future Russian expansion. They would soon see that the policy was ongoing. Ottoman Christian revolutionaries would also see that the Russian policy potentially worked in their favor. As will be seen in later chapters, this realization on the part of both Ottoman Muslims and Ottoman Christians became an important part of the bloody history of intercommunal warfare that was to come.

SUMMARY (p. 49)

In the nineteenth century, the equilibrium in the Caucasus and the Ottoman East was upset by Russian invasions and the forced exile of Caucasian Muslims. By the standards of the late twentieth century, this equilibrium was not satisfactory. Beset by external enemies and a poor economy, the Ottoman government was not capable of properly policing its own people. But the evil that replaced the traditional equilibrium was far worse. Whole peoples were forced from their homes into refugee camps, where they died in great numbers, and ultimately into regions where the inhabitants had no wish to receive them. Rather than aiding the situation, Russian attacks on the Ottomans contributed to further deterioration of civil order by removing the Ottoman Army, the one force that had, however deficiently, kept the peace. Perhaps the worst effect of the Russian invasions was the creation of a Muslim-Armenian polarity, a tradition of mutual distrust and animosity that was eventually to doom both groups.