Since the turn of the twenty-first century, the historiography on the final years of the Ottoman Empire and the Armenian Genocide has made tremendous strides. This latest book by Ronald Grigor Suny, a professor at the University of Michigan, is a testament to this phenomenon. While many of the issues and explanations have been previously discussed, what distinguishes Suny’s scholarship is delving into why, when and how the Armenian Genocide happened.
This book is not only an excellent synthesis of previous scholarly work, but it also rigorously analyses the context and circumstances under which this human tragedy occurred. The events that led to the Armenian Genocide are viewed within a political, social, economic and psychological lens, unfolding at a time when ideal forms of nation and empire compete with each other in the political spectrum and the clouds of a Great War in Europe gathered.
They Can Live in the Desert but Nowhere Else (the title taken from a Talat Pasha diktat) thoroughly reconstructs and analyses the events from a variety of perspectives. First from the Armenians who lived, amongst others, in the six vilayets in Turkish Armenia in a “relatively benign symbiosis” with their imperial masters for over four centuries to the Armenian bourgeoisie and merchants in Constantinople. Second, from the perspective of the Young Turk leaders, all natives of Rumelia and who viewed the loss of the Balkan and European provinces, their homeland, as nothing short of apocalyptic. Finally, the meddling of the Great Powers, the paranoia of the Russian existential threat at their doorstep, the influx of thousands of Balkan Muslim refugees and the growing perception of the Armenians as the internal fifth column all produced a state of political and social crisis for the Young Turk regime. Suny effectively analyses and weaves each of these factors and demonstrates how they all contributed to the Armenian Genocide. In effect, by 1914, the concept of an Ottomanist, liberal and multicultural approach had been abandoned by the Young Turk leaders and theorists in favour of a pan-Turanian form of Turkish nationalism. Furthermore, they convinced themselves that the survival of the state depended on the elimination of one of its most loyal subject peoples.
Drawing on archival documents and eyewitness accounts, Suny takes great care in presenting the facts and conclusions and thus marginalises any denialist position while at the same time studiously avoids any nationalist dialogue. As he chronicles the various stages of revolution, counterrevolution, war, removal and genocide, this book thoroughly investigates those historical moments of choice when political actors were presented with a set of circumstances, and might have acted differently, but instead embarked upon a course that led to annihilation and devastation. The result is an extremely well documented, thoughtful piece of work that analyses the myriad circumstances which all together contributed to a final solution of the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire.
Written by Richard Mourad Anooshian
Originally written for Bardez, AI’s periodical in 2013-2020