Reddit reviews Ottomans and Armenians: A Study in Counterinsurgency

The dominant narrative regarding the 1915 events are the viewpoints of countries that were attacking the Ottoman Empire during WWI rather than those of the Ottoman military command. Dr. Edward J. Erickson is a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel, and perhaps the most highly-regarded military historian on the Ottoman Army from 1877-1923. In this presentation, he explains why military necessity was the motive behind the decision to relocate Armenians.


13:55: Discussion of the exhaustion of the Ottoman state. It had been losing ground since 1620. The empire was weak, and therefore subjected to scattered rebellions by various ethnic groups empire-wide. The traditional Ottoman response to an insurgency was to send in the army.

17:05: Overview of the Armenian Revolutionary Committees – small groups of highly motivated, heavily-armed, and dedicated people seeking autonomy or independence

30:05: Discusses the Third Army by the Russian frontier and its vulnerability to Armenian insurrections; explains the army’s dependence on the supply lines. Armenian communities laid directly on these roads. Starting in February 1915, there were increasing numbers of interdictions on the roads: bridges blown up, telegraph lines cut, supply parties interdicted and massacred, stoppage of supplies, etc.

32:25: The city of Van became the signature event in Erickson’s view that changed everything. The Armenian committee by April 15, 1915 quickly took the city in a well-organized and well-planned rebellion. The Ottoman army was unable to take back the city as there wasn’t a military presence in the area. The Druzhiny and the Russian army attacked from the East at the same time.

35:10: An important regional city fell to Armenians and Russians, and from the Ottoman perspective, unless drastic measures were taken, other vulnerable cities would likely follow. There was a direct threat by the insurgent revolutionary committees to the lines of communication upon which the logistics of the Ottoman armies on three fronts depended.

The Ottomans did not have security forces to deal with an insurgency while the army was on the fronts. The rebellion was launched as the British were about to land troops at Gallipoli, which required even more men toward the Dardanelles. The Russians were also about to engage with an Ottoman force around Dilman in northwestern Persia.

There were no trained soldiers available in the interior to deal with the Armenian rebellion. The traditional Ottoman response of sending in the military was no longer an option. Already severely weakened by war in the Balkans, and the more immediate catastrophe of Sarıkamış, the Ottoman army was in no position to fight a multi-front war and fend off thousands of insurgents sabotaging the war effort from behind the lines.

The archives demonstrate that the Ottoman high intelligence believed there was a rebellion. This is confirmed in external archives as well. The Ottomans were unprepared to deal with a large-scale insurrection.

38:50: With so few regular forces available to suppress the insurrection, a strategy for the relocation of the civilian population was consistent with the counter-insurgency practices of that period. On 31 May 1915, relocation decree was sent to separate the insurgents from the general population. The Armenian-populated areas were where the lines of communications were, and where the insurgents posed a threat to the Third Army

46:46: Relocation was a common practice in counter-insurgency in the first half of the 20th century. When the guerrillas/insurgents couldn’t be defeated any other way, this was a common practice to separate the people from the insurgents and deny those insurgents’ sources of supply.


Relocation as a Campaign Design

Britain – Acadia (1755) “Permanent Exile” (12,000)

Spain – Cuba (1895-1897) “La Reconcentration” (500,000)

United States – Samar (1899-1901) “Zones of Protection” (100,000)

Britain – Boer War (1899-1901) “Concentration Camps” (166,000)

Ottoman Empire – Armenians (1915) “Relocation Camps” (350,000)

Russian Empire – Jews (1915) “Exile” (300,000)

United States – Nisei (1942) “Internment Camps” (100,000)

Britain – Malaya (1952-1957) The Briggs Plan “New Villages” (500,000)

France – Algeria (1956-1969) “Quadrillage” (800,000)

United States – Vietnam (1965-1968) “Protected Hamlets (200,000)

Death Camps

Germany – Europe (1942-1945) “Concentration Camps” (6,000,000)



50:25

• Were the Armenian revolutionary committees an existential threat to Ottoman national security?
  
  The revolutionary committees were a threat. They had both the capability (weapons, training, position to interdict Ottoman supply lines) and the capacity (enough of them in key locations).
  
  
• Did Russia, Britain, and France conspire with the Armenian committees to instigate revolution in coordination with allied military operations?
  
  This was also a fact. The committees were driven and paid to rebel, as confirmed in the Ottoman, British, French, and German archives. The Great Powers, especially Russia, were actively engaged in getting Armenians to rebel.
  
  54:22: Q&A
  
  
  Further Reading:
  
  The Armenians and Ottoman Military Policy, 1915
  
  Ottomans and Armenians: A Study in Counterinsurgency