Review of Armenian Studies

Abstract

For Armenians, Adana became a symbol of a sacred and national cause to build Cilicia Armenia by attaining the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia, a former Armenian state of historical importance, and gathering the Armenian people scattered in Anatolia in this region. The Sis Catholicosate, one of the most important religious centers for Armenians, was also located in this region. The "Armenian national awakening movement" was initiated with the support of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM), which had carried out missionary activities especially in the eastern and southern Anatolian regions since 1830. The Armenian nationalists, who could not find the support they expected from the Great Powers of the period for their demands of establishing Armenia in the "Six Provinces" of Anatolia, followed a similar path to the policy of the Balkan countries who seceded from the Ottoman Empire after the 1878 Treaty of Berlin. Through the terrorist organizations they established, the said nationalists started to attract the attention of the Christian public opinion by instigating revolts in the region. The biggest obstacle in front of Armenian ideals and aspirations was the Ottoman Sultan Abdülhamit II. With the measures he took in 1890, Abdülhamit II to a large extent prevented the revolts from spreading and the Armenian nationalists from reaching their goals. Abdülhamit II's Islamist policies and the methods he used in suppressing the revolts were used by the Christian missionaries in Anatolia to relay exaggerated descriptions of a "Christian Massacre" to the Western public, which made him known as the “Red Sultan” in a short time. Abdülhamit II was portrayed as a blood-drinking monster in the Western media, cartoons and articles were prepared in line with this portrayal. Armenian separatists, in cooperation with the members of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) who were against Abdülhamit II, accelerated the insurrectionary activities until the declaration of the Constitutional Monarchy in 1908, and took advantage of the turmoil in the Balkan countries to start a new revolt. Especially with a revolt they started in this region, the intervention of the Western public would be ensured, and an Armenia would be established in the Cilicia region by the landing of foreign soldiers in Mersin. The events that started with the murder of two Turkish youngsters by Armenians on 27 March 1909 turned into a revolt after spreading on 13-14 April, and thousands of people were killed on both sides, the exact number of which is not known. In the reports sent to the Western media by ABCFM missionaries who were in the region during the revolt, an effort was made to portray the violence experienced in the revolt as "a planned massacre of Sultan Abdülhamit II". The simultaneousness of the Adana events with the reactionary uprising in Istanbul brought about the debates on whether the Sultan was responsible for the Adana events. This study aims to analyze the role of Sultan Abdülhamit II in the Adana events based on the testimonies of the witnesses of the period.