The possession of arms saved many Armenians

March 1st, 2012

The possession of arms saved many Armenians
Date: Oct 18, 2007 5:28 PM
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=N2M4YWQxZjJjZDZiZTM2MTc0NmFjMTMzMzRlNWRlMzk=

October 16, 2007 4:00 AM

Genocide Resistance
The possession of arms saved many Armenians.

By Dave Kopel & Paul Gallant, & Joanne D. Eisen

Whatever may be said about the U.S. House of
Representatives committee vote concerning the use of the
term ?genocide? in reference to Turkey?s atrocities against
the Armenians during World War I, two facts are
indisputable: It was gun confiscation that made the
atrocities possible. And it was the possession of firearms
that saved many Armenians.

Under the Ottoman Empire, Armenians, who are mostly
Christian, had not been allowed to own firearms. This was
standard practice for Christians and Jews throughout the
Empire, under sharia law for the ?Dhimmi? ? Christians and
Jews (and sometimes other faiths) who were allowed to retain
their religion, provided that they lived in subordination.

One feature of dhimmitude is a ban on the possession of any
weapons, and a prohibition from striking a Muslim, even in
an act of self-defense. Unsurprisingly, the Dhimmi were
easy prey for thugs and extortionists. For example,
Armenian Christians in the 19th century had to pay the Kurds
not to attack their villages and pillage their monasteries.

Military necessity led to a change in the Ottoman policy in
1908. Armenian Christian soldiers would be permitted to
train with weapons, and by 1915, a significant number of
Armenian men had done so. After the Balkan War of 1912,
many Armenian civilians bought firearms from returning
Turkish soldiers. Weapons and ammunition were secreted in
the walls of homes.

During World War I, in 1915, the Ottoman government decided
to launch a massive persecution of the Armenians. The
current Turkish government, along some scholars, denies that
genocide was the intention, although there is no doubt that
many hundreds of thousands died.

U.S. Ambassador Henry Morgenthau reported that the Ottoman
Turks faced an obstacle: ?Before Armenia could be
slaughtered, Armenia must be made defenseless.? Armenians
were reluctant to disarm, given their distrust of the Turks.

As a first step, Armenian soldiers in the Ottoman army were
stripped of their weapons. Beaten and clubbed, placed on
short rations, and sometimes murdered, they were used to dig
fortifications and latrines for the Turks. Soldiers fled
and returned home, bringing stories of the destruction of
Armenian villages and towns, murders of priests, and rapes
of women.

Disarmament orders were sent to Armenian towns; however,
Armenian leaders would collect broken and useless weapons,
and, with a bribe, deliver them to Turkish leaders ? while
keeping the functioning weapons for themselves.

As the persecution intensified, contemporaneous Armenian
writings lamented that if civilians taken a more pro-active
approach sooner, more Armenians would have survived. But
initially, the Armenians had felt their best chance for
survival lay in keeping a low profile and remaining passive.
It was only after a long pattern of murders by the Turks
that they began to actively defend themselves.

The 5,000 townspeople of Shabin Karahissar, including 600
poorly armed Armenian men, retreated to a nearby fort when
10,000 regular and irregular Turkish army troops approached.
The Armenians? guns allowed them to keep the enemy at bay
for 26 days. Although they had sufficient water, they
lacked adequate planning and eventually starved. One
survivor, Aram Haigaz, wrote: ?Of the more than 5,000 who
ascended the Fort, only 47 survived?.?

Armed resistance movements also sprang up in Ourfa, in
Shadakh, and in the Pesan Valley. At Van, a group of 1,500
men with only 300 rifles fought off an army of 5,000 Turkish
soldiers, and diverted the attention of Turkish troops away
from the Russian enemy. The defenders at Van successfully
held out for five weeks until they were rescued by the
Russian army. But shortly after, the Russian army made an
unexpected retreat, allowing the Turks to swoop in by
surprise and kill the 55,000 people of Van.

The best-known and most successful of resistance movement
was memorialized in the 1934 historical novel The Forty Days
of Musa Dagh. People from several villages retreated to the
mountain whose English name is ?Moses Mountain.? Provisioned
with weapons and supplies, the villagers held out on Musa
Dagh for 53 days.

Pastor Tigran Andreasian listed the Armenian population of
his native region as 6,311. Of them, 4,231 persons chose to
fight on the mountain, while 2,080 people obeyed the
deportation order of the Turks. When the fighters were
eventually rescued by the Allies, an amazing 4,200 survivors
were taken to Port Said, Egypt.

As for those who accepted deportation, according to Vahram
Shemmassian, a scholar and descendant of one of the
fighters, ?the exact count of casualties may never be
determined, many families lost several members and others
perished completely.?

Hitler reminded his generals that ?nobody remembers the
Armenians,? and he worked assiduously to disarm his own
genocide victims more thoroughly than the Turks had done.
When we do remember the Armenians, let us remember that the
difference between life and death was often the possession
of arms to resist mass murder by government.

David Kopel is research director for the Independence
Institute. Paul Gallant and Joanne D. Eisen are senior
fellows at the Independence Institute.

The Second Amendment IS Homeland Security !