One of the pivotal questions posed from the outset bore on the principle of foreign intervention. Sabaheddin and some of those participating in the congress were in favor of it. Those who voted against it, according to Bahaeddin Şakir’s archives, were Abdülhalim Memduh, Abdurrahman Bedirhan (representing the newspaper Kurdistan), Ahmed Ferid, Ahmed Rıza, Ali Fahri (on the editorial board of Osmanlı), Albert Fua, Mustafa Hamdi, Dr. Nâzım, and Yusuf Akçura.
A majority of the 25 delegates voted down a motion, put forward at the third session of the congress by the 18 representatives of the minorities, to discuss the question of foreign intervention again. A joint declaration was nevertheless hammered out, to “remind the European powers that it was their duty, and also in the general interests of humanity, to see to it that the clauses of the treaties and international agreements between them and the Sublime Porte be carried out in such a way as to benefit all parts of the Ottoman Empire.”
The declaration had the merit of summing up both the question of outside intervention and the no less controversial question of how to implement the promised reforms – subjects that obviously concerned the Armenians and Macedonians above all others.
Yet, it had undoubtedly been too heavily diluted from the standpoint of the Armenian delegation, which solemnly declared that the Armenians were “ready to collaborate with the Ottoman liberals in every joint activity aimed at changing the present regime”; that “beyond such joint actions, the Armenian committees [would] pursue their particular activities, it being well understood that these activities are directed against the existing regime, not the unity and organic existence of Turkey”; and that “their particular activity has no other goal than to bring about the immediate enactment of Article 61 of the Treaty of Berlin as well as the Memorandum of 11 May 1895 and the appendix to it.”
This came down to agreeing to cooperate to preserve Turkey’s territorial integrity while maintaining complete autonomy when it came to bringing about reforms in the eastern provinces.
Ahmed Rıza and his partisans were, obviously, opposed to this declaration, so Sabaheddin had to propose a variant. It called for “realizing the Armenians’ legitimate desires in connection with the organization and local administration of the provinces that they inhabit and of all other provinces; establishing a central government based on liberal ideas, the best way of guaranteeing the maintenance of national rights as well as the regular functioning of the provincial governments, from which the Armenians would benefit on the same footing and in the same measure as all the other peoples of the empire.”
In this way, the prince tried to satisfy the Armenians’ desire to have a hand in governing the provinces in which they lived while simultaneously envisaging an extension of the principle of “administrative” decentralization to the other provinces of the empire. But, in fact, he succeeded only in displeasing both sides: the Armenians left the congress before the last session, held on 10 February 1902. Nevertheless, the new organization’s central committee was elected – by secret ballot.
The vote confirmed that Sabaheddin and a majority favorable to British intervention had taken control of the movement, which now included, among the accusations it leveled against the Hamidian regime, the sultan’s policy of “suppressing the Armenians.” However, the majority also provoked the formation of a minority “coalition” within the movement. This coalition brought together Ahmed Rıza and the activist young guard, which included many officers. It accused the majority of collaborating with the Armenians and Macedonians and consequently working against the interests of the empire. It accused it particularly of basing its strategy toward Europe on a defense of the Armenians, so as to legitimize the movement, as it were, in the eyes of the European chancelleries.
Thus, we see here the emergence of a group of Young Turks whose convictions were in every respect at variance with the activity of the Armenian committees – even if, like the ARF after the 1902 congress, this minority took positions shaped to some extent by the desire to remain open or even conciliatory. In the wake of the congress, negotiations were opened between the majority and the ARF on the one side, and the Macedonian Committee on the other – represented by Aknuni (Khachadur Malumian) and Boris Sarafov, respectively.
To arrive at a comprehensive view of the positions of the other Armenian Committees and understand their perceptions of the Young Turk movement, let us examine the way the SDHP reacted after the 1902 congress.
A long article by the editorial board of the SDHP’s official organ, published in London, begins by recalling that the SDHP had been the only party not to participate in the February 1902 congress and that it had made the decision not to attend “based on a thorough-going analysis of the situation.”
At the general congress that the SDHP held in the same period, the article declares, the party came to the conclusion that it was not possible to work with the Young Turks, for “dissatisfaction [with the current regime] is not sufficient grounds for collaboration,” which could only be based on common leadership and common political goals.
However, the editorial board contends there is “a towering barrier between the two groups,” even if this is not obvious, for the Young Turks’ “sole objective is to put the ‘pitiful’ Midhat Constitution into effect, without in any way altering the absolute tyrant’s irresponsible status.”
The author then turns to the heart of the matter. He explains his party’s position: The Young Turks like to say that they want to propel the country by peaceful means down an evolutionary path toward a purely internal revolution of all state functions and all laws. But they do not for a moment consider giving up an inch of the state … The preservation of the state’s territorial integrity is as much an article of faith for them as it is for the sultan and all the Old Turks. In that respect, they are as stubbornly patriotic as the sultan and the Old Turks, if not, indeed, more so. Their revolutionary aspirations and spirit are, consequently, strictly internal. They want to reform Turkey, revive it, and rejuvenate it, without, as we have said, calling state boundaries into question. It follows that, when the moment comes to defend the state against foreign encroachment or the kind of domestic discontent and revolt that threatens to violate its territorial integrity (elevated to the level of a sacred dogma) and undermine its organic unity – in a word, to divide or dismember that organic unity – then, we say, the Young Turks will readily forget, at once, all the divergences that distinguish them from their compatriots, the Old Turks and the sultan, and will join with them to defend, like a single man, their common vatan [fatherland] against foreign and domestic foes. The Young Turks say, “let us revolutionize the country, but fi rst let us preserve its territorial integrity.” We have nothing to object to this; how could we? One cannot ask them to unite with the enemies of the state in order to help dismember their fatherland.
Compared to the moderate position laid out by Sapah-Giulian in February 1901, this declaration is surprisingly radical. How are we to explain this change in tone, this definite rejection of the Young Turk experiment? The line of argument developed in the text gives us an idea of the party’s opinion of the Young Turks: they are accused of nationalism and of pursuing shadowy objectives designed to bury or instrumentalize the Armenian cause. By itself, however, this does not suffice to explain the disconcerting bluntness of the article, this “declaration of war.”
The internal debates and the reunification of the Hnchaks and the Verakazmial Hnchaks that took place at this time, or even the information that reached the party’s central committee at this time, may have induced the Hnchak leaders to radicalize their discourse and attack not only the Young Turks but also the ARF’s policy of collaborating with them. As if to take their distance from ARF positions, the Hnchaks rejected, above all, the principle of Turkey’s territorial integrity, which constituted the obligatory basis for dialogue between the Young Turk opposition and the Armenian activists.
This parts is from Raymond Kévorkian’s book, THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE A Complete History, pp. 20-22.
In photo- Aknuni (Khachadur Malumian)
