Tragedy and Survival of the Armenian Church Essay

Tragedy and Survival of the Armenian Church - Essay Example Thus in the nineteenth century the country was divided by Russia and Turkey. The years under Russia and Turkey were marked with genocide and oppression. Difficult was the life of the Armenians under the Turkish rule. They were treated as servants of the Ottoman Empire, suffered constant attacks of the Muslim bands and were deprived of the basic human rights. The interference of the Western Powers trying to protect the Christian nation did not help much, all the edicts promulgated by Sultan being not supported by any concrete measures. Little effect was produced by international San Stefano and Berlin treaties of 1978. The situation became only harder, so that in 1890 the Armenians organized the forces of their own, those being political parties Clarion and the Armenian Revolutionary Federation. However, this only served as a pretext for massive massacres organized by Sultan Abduhamid. The massacres of 1894-1895 in the province of Mush brought away lives of many Armenians, and nearly 100,000 took refuge in Russian Armenia, The Balkans and Americas. In 1909 the massacre in Adana again brought away lives of the Armenians. The tyrannical rule of Sultan Abduhamid was overthrown in 1908. The Young Turks, the party that came to power, were largely assisted by the Armenian people, who hoped to see better times with the new regime. Their hopes were not to come to life. The Young Turks also had a dream, that being of the creation of monolithic Turkish Empire. They wanted their nation to be pure from alien cultures and traditions. That policy was called pan-Turanism. The Young Turks understood that Armenians would resist turkization. So it was decided to put an end to the Armenian Question destroying or deporting all the Armenians from Western Armenia. However, Armenian people were not aware of those plans and were preparing a program of reforms that was to give them a kind of