Epilogue

Allowing for all possible bias and exaggeration the events that engulfed the eastern provinces of the Ottoman Empire (and to a lesser extent Istanbul) were terrible. How were they to be explained? In the conspectus of British public opinion Abdülhamit was quickly identified as the fons et origo mali, a view shared in the United States and to a lesser extent in Europe and one which has prevailed in many histories of the Armenian question until the present time. It was a view held not only by Armenian propagandists but also by diplomats at the time. After Sasun the dragoman at the British embassy in Istanbul, Adam Block, wrote: ‘The sultan has from the first known that a massacre of some kind took place in consequence of his orders and hence his aversion to any inquiry’. ¹ This is not quite the same as accusing the sultan of ordering massacres, but as time went by the suspicions of the ambassadors strengthened. Writing on 28 October 1895 Terrell noted that a ‘fearful suspicion exists at the British embassy that the sultan himself secretly directs this as a concession to Muslim fanaticism which it is known threatens his own safety and as a means of propitiating the priestly influence’. ² Giving details of atrocities in the eastern vilayets in a despatch written in December the same year Terrell observed that ‘it will be noticed that where a foreign consul is established these things have not been carried [out] to the extent now revealed, for a consul in Turkey is like a single policeman preserving the public order. It must be observed also and emphasised that the same hand which beckons Europe to wait and see if his reforms will not be carried out pushes on this work and screens it from the eyes of foreign observers’. ³ Yet Terrell also blamed the British, as we know, referring to Currie’s ‘aggressive policies’ as having led to massacres. Vambéry believed that if any one person could be responsible for the killings it was not Abdülhamit but his second secretary at the palace – ‘Izzet planned and carried out the attack on the Armenians’. ⁴ The sultan and his ministers denied responsibility, blaming the revolutionary committees for deliberately instigating turmoil and accusing the foreign press of misreporting, the missionaries of meddling and the British for their constant harassment in the face of imminent disaster. Abdülhamit believed that Currie was a wicked man:

One day he came to see me about this Armenian question. He crossed his legs and began to shout that we are doing this and that to the Christians. I was so angry with him, but what could I do? I am a government servant. My Ottoman blood was so disturbed that I could hardly hold myself. After the ambassador left, I was so full of frustration that I could hardly hold my tears. ⁵