New Studies Published on the Turkish Armenian Conflict

The ATAA is pleased to share the latest scholarly research and publications that may be of interest to the Turkish-American community.


The Armenians and Ottoman Military Policy, 1915

Edward J. Erickson, War in History 2008 15 (2) 141-167 (27 pages) 10.1177/0968344507087001, SAGE Publications.

First page, first paragraph: "Mainstream western scholarship maintains that the Armenian insurrection of 1915 was never an actual threat to the security of the Ottoman state in the First World War and that the relocation of the Armenians of eastern Anatolia was unnecessary. In truth, no study of the Armenian insurrection and its effect on Ottoman military policy has ever been conducted. This article examines the Ottoman army's lines of communications architecture and logistics posture in eastern Anatolia in 1915. Armenian threats to the logistics and security of the Ottoman armies in Caucasia and Palestine are overlaid on this system. Evolving and escalatory Ottoman military policies are then explained in terms of threat assessments and contemporary counter-insurgency strategy. The article seeks to inform the reader why the Ottomans reacted so vigorously and violently to the events of the spring of 1915"

Last page, last paragraph: "Nothing can justify the massacres of the Armenians nor can a case be made that the entire Armenian population of the six Anatolian provinces was an active and hostile threat to Ottoman national security. However, a case can be made that the Ottomans judged the Armenians to be a great threat to the 3rd and 4th Armies and that genuine intelligence and security concerns drove that decision. It may also be stated that the Ottoman reaction was escalatory and responsive rather than premeditated and pre-planned. In this context the Ottoman relocation decision becomes more understandable as a military solution to a military problem. While political and ideological imperatives perhaps drove the decision equally, if not harder, these do not negate the fact that the Armenians were a great military danger."


Captain Larkin and the Turks: The Strategic Impact of the Operations
of HMS Doris in Early 1915

Edward J. Erickson, Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 46, No. 1, 151-162, January 2010.

Page 1, first paragraph: "As the Ottoman Empire entered the First World War in November 1914 there were a number of troubling events involving Armenians that served to convince the Turks of impending Armenian insurgency. It is well known that in the Caucasus, numbers of Armenian men fled to join the Czar's armies against the Ottoman Empire and guerrilla warfare between Armenian bands and the Turks broke out on the frontier near the Black Sea. It is less well known that the Ottomans were also extremely concerned about Armenian activities in the area of Alexandretta (the modern Turkish port of Iskenderun) particularly around Dörtyol, a tiny railway stop and village close by the Mediterranean Sea. This concern was mainly the result of the operations of the HMS Doris in December 1914 and January 1915. This article uses British, German, and Turkish archival sources to focus on the ship's operations in the vicinity of Dörtyol and on the strategic affect these had on Ottoman perceptions of threats to the empire and on actual Ottoman responses. The Doris figures prominently in two critical strategic outcomes - the relocation of the Armenians in 1915 and in the activation of three Ottoman army divisions for coastal defence and internal security."

Last page, last paragraph: "Arguably, in the end, Larkin's missions were a failure as the Ottoman lines of communication were never seriously disrupted nor did the prospective British amphibious invasion at Alexandretta ever take place. Nevertheless, Captain Frank Larkin's voyages in command of HMS Doris in the winter of 1914-15 had an effect out of all proportion to their duration and scale. Larkin's activities were so actively consistent and aggressive that the Ottomans came to believe that a British amphibious invasion was being coordinated with and supported by an imminent Armenian insurrection in the vicinity of Dörtyol. Unintentionally, Larkin played a key role in driving the Turks to some very poor decisions. It is problematic to imagine that had Larkin actually been tasked to conduct deception operations or diversionary activities that his raiding would have been nearly as convincing as what he actually accomplished. In any case, there is no question that Larkin and HMS Doris helped convince the Turks to make strategic decisions that diverted substantial valuable and scarce resources away from the war effort."

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