Ämnet för min C-uppsats handlar om diskussionen om vad som kan ...

1.5 BackgroundIn order to understand the dynamics of the Armenian question and the background of theArmenian Genocide, it is necessary to understand the transformation which Ottoman Turkeywas going through at the end of 19 th century. The Turkish Empire, after several centuries ofdecline, was at the edge of dissolution and was saved only due to the rivalry between the MajorPowers who did not want the strategic straits of Bosporus and Dardanelles to fall in the hand ofa competitor. 139 Until the mid-1800s, the non-Muslim minorities in the Ottoman Empire hadenjoyed a relatively calm existence under the rule of their Muslim masters. However, from theearly 19 th century two developments hastened the transformation of the heterogeneous OttomanEmpire, to an utterly homogeneous Turkish Empire with no room for the non-Muslim non-Turks. The first was the gradual emancipation of the Christian nations in the Balkans underTurkish rule, which meant that the Empire, now, with the exception of the Armenians,Assyrians/Syrians, and patches of Greek communities on the Black Sea shores and in the westernparts of the Empire, exclusively consisted of Muslims. The second event, the Arab uprising andbreaking off from the Ottoman Empire, made it not only predominantly Muslim, but alsoTurkish. This would show to be an ill-fated development for the remaining minorities, especiallythe Christians (e.g. the Kurds were not regarded as an obvious alien group as the Armenianswere). This development, together with constant Armenian demands for reforms in theArmenian provinces (provisioned by the treaties of San Stefano and Berlin, 1878), raised theattention of the Central Government in Constantinople. If the Armenian provinces were not tobe lost as the territories in Balkan, radical measures were necessary. 140The first measures to diminish the Armenian plurality in Western Armenia (Turkish Armenia),was to artificially change the demography of the area by including densely Muslim-populatedneighbouring areas into the Armenian provinces, thus decreasing the Armenian relativemajority. 141 The second step was tampering with statistics:Before the Armenian question arose, the official Ottoman estimate of the Armenian population inthe Ottoman Empire was fairly significant. The official book of Turkey, compiled by SallahedinBeg in 1867, puts the Armenian population in the Ottoman Empire at 2,400,000. As soon as theArmenian question emerged, in the context of the Russian-Ottoman war of 1877-1878, theOttoman official books showed an astonishing decrease in the number of Armenians, thanks tomanipulated statistics. 142During the 1880 negotiations, the Turkish Government claimed that the Armenian population inthe six Armenian provinces numbered 727,000. The attempt did not go unnoticed and in a letter139 Pasdermadjian, 1949, p. 346.140 The provisions are mentioned mainly in article 16 of the San Stefano Treaty and article 61 of the BerlinTreaty. See Hurst, 1972, p. 528-548 respective p. 551-578.141 Pasdermadjian, 1949, p. 394.142 Pasdermadjian, 1949, p. 399.33