Revolutionary Leaders, Literature and Innocence

Revolutionary culture is a powerful revolutionary weapon for the broad masses of the people.

 It prepares the ground ideologically before the revolution comes 

and is an important, indeed essential, fighting front 

in the general revolutionary front during the revolution.

Mao Tse Tung ^[1]

And of course literature is a very important component of  culture.  

Armen Garo, 1872-1923

19 years old Armenian American girl Armanoush of Bastard in Istanbul, Elif Shafak's novel,  tells that her grandfather who was a writer was arrested on 24 April 1915  although he was innocent. In real life on 24 April 1915 some 220 Armenian writers, members of parliament, journalists and intellectuals were arrested and sent to exile in Central Anatolia. Some of them unfortunately lost their lives meanwhile. They were leaders of Armenian Revolutionary Movement. As Leah Fry^[2] examplifies in the case of Walt Whitman, the distinctly political language of a poem like "Beat! Beat! Drums!" demonstrates the unique role poetry can "play in kindling the patriotic impulse in reader‘s hearts." I leave it to the readers to make a judgement if writers arrested were influential leaders, heroes of Armenian revolutionary movement or not. Rather than being irrelevant, it looks as if this arresting was actually a delayed action. Because if the arrests were materialised earlier, surely  Karekin Pastermadjian (or Garegin Pastermadjian) better known by his nom de guerre Armen Garo / Armen Karo,  who is presented as one of the distinguished leaders of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation  in Wikipedia, should had been among them.

Readers of this blog may remember his name from the following paragraph posted on 30 April 2012  in "Just “1915 Armenian Genocide” or “1915-1923 Armenian Genocide”?" :

1915 was the second year of the First World War. With a declining economy having gone under the custody of European great powers the Ottoman Empire had to choose to join WWI with the Central Powers in August 1914. As soon as the order of Ottoman mobilization was issued on 3 August 1914, Armenian revolutionary organizations met and “decided to incite unrest, massacres, and acts of incendiarism behind the front and to induce Armenian soldiers to desert the army with their weapons. … After Russia declared war against the Ottoman Empire, on 2 November 1914, a large number of Armenians deserted the Ottoman army and took up arms as rebels.”[1] Even eminent people like Karakin Pasdermadjian --who went by the nom de guerre "Armen Garo No. 1"--, Erzurum Representative in the Ottoman Chamber of Deputies went over to the Russians with almost all the Armenian soldiers in the Ottoman Third Army and returned at their head — burning villages and killing the Muslim peasants who fell into his hands. On 21 December 1914, the Ottoman military campaign opened on the Caucasian front and on 4 January 1915, the Ottoman army was disastrously defeated at Sarıkamış. Besides terrible weather the betrayal of the Armenian population in the rear caused a disaster with 60,000-80,000 dead out of an army of 90,000. The Armenian volunteers in the Russian army knew the countryside and they could count on the support of the local Armenians. …. By the spring of 1915 it was expected that there would be between 20,000 and 25,000 Armenians in the field.

Yes, if  the arrests were materialized earlier and Armen Garo were among those arrested,  may be the  Sarikamış disaster would not be that heavy and surely that many Eastern Anatolian muslim population would not die or suffer.

This quoted paragraph also explains why Armenian soldiers were disarmed and labour battalion conscripts were deployed in road construction behind the lines, as Armanoush mentions in the novel, accusing Ottoman Turks for this. Can you imagine an army not taking precautions to defend its country, but delivering weapons and horses to a minority group members, who are ready to cross the border and join the army of the enemy to fight against the people with whom they were born on the same land and lived together for centuries. Armenians came to this point because as the Ottoman Empire was falling they had lost  their faith in Turks and depending on great powers started dreaming to gain power to rule the region;  taking Greek independence of 1829 as an example. Innocence of aiming to become dominant in a region through ethnic cleansing  where  they formed 20-30 percent of the population only is open to serious discussion and I can't imagine if any argument in this direction could be persuasive enough.

Articles ^[3] on alleged "Armenian Genocide" in Wikipedia actually reveal the controversies of the allegations themselves. The issues of newspapers such as New York Times and Christian Science Monitor pertaining to those years contain large number of news items and articles which demonstrate that Armenians were fighting againts Ottoman Turks and they were supported by Americans, French and many other peoples with Christian faith. Reading through all these and thinking about the support given to allegations of genocide in various countries today make one sometimes think if crusades are still on in a different way.  Probably this is true in the inner world of some fanatics, but surely can't be a common approach. Sources which show the other side of the coin in English are not plenty. As they increase in number and get read we can understand each other better. Then the big picture can get clearer and bring peoples closer. This is what I want to believe in. I need an apology in memory of those who lost their lives and suffered on Turkish side --comprising all peoples who shared the same bitter fate with Turks such as Kurds, Circassians--; as much as Armenians think they deserve an apology. My expectation of an apology is not only from Armenians but from the whole Christian world who injected with nationalistic ideas through missionary schools disregarding demographic structure, encouraged and supported Armenians against Turks and made two friendly nations enemies.

^[3]  Armenian genocide. Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_Genocide Accessed on 12.08.2012

Armenian Holocaust:My Story blog by Selma Aslan is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Gayriticari-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.