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The Adana Massacre occurred in Adana Province, in the Ottoman Empire,
in April 1909. A religious-ethnic clash in the city of
Adana
amidst governmental upheaval resulted in a series of
anti-Armenian pogroms throughout the district. Reports estimated
that the massacres in Adana Province resulted in 15,000 to
30,000 deaths.
Turkish and Armenian
revolutionary groups had worked together to secure the
restoration of constitutional rule, in 1908. On 31 March (or 13
April, by the Western calendar) a military revolt directed
against the Committee of Union and Progress seized Istanbul.
While the revolt lasted only ten days, it precipitated a
massacre of Armenians in the province of Adana that lasted over
a month.
The massacres were
rooted in political, economic, and religious differences. The
Armenian population of Adana was "richest and most prosperous",
and the violence included the destruction of "tractors and other
kinds of mechanized equipment." The Christian-minority Armenians
had also openly supported the coup against Sultan Abdul Hamid
II, which had deprived the Islamic head of state of power. The
awakening of Turkish nationalism, and the perception of the
Armenians as a separatist, European-controlled entity, also
contributed to the violence.
In 1908, the Young
Turk government came to power in a bloodless revolution. Within
a year, Turkey's Armenian population, empowered by the dismissal
of Abdul Hamid II, began organizing politically in support of
the new government, which promised to place them on equal legal
footing with their Muslim counterparts.
Having long endured
so-called Dhimmi status, and having suffered the brutality and
oppression of Hamidian leadership since 1876, the Armenian
minority in Cilicia perceived the nascent Young Turk government
as a godsend. Christians now being granted the rights to arm
themselves and form politically significant groups, it was not
long before Abdul Hamid loyalists, themselves acculturated into
the system that had perpetrated the Hamidian massacres of the
1890s, came to view the empowerment of the Christian minority as
coming at their expense.
The Countercoup of
March 1909 wrested control of the government out of the hands of
the secularist Young Turks, and Abdul Hamid II briefly recovered
his dictatorial powers. Appealing to the reactionary Muslim
population with populist rhetoric calling for the re-institution
of Islamic law under the banner of a pan-Islamic caliphate, the
Sultan mobilized popular support against the Young Turks by
identifying himself with the historically Islamic character of
the state.
 According to one
source, when news of a mutiny in Istanbul arrived in Adana,
speculation circulated among the Muslim population of an
imminent Armenian insurrection. By April 14 the Armenian quarter
was attacked by a mob, and many thousands of Armenians were
killed in the ensuing weeks.
Other reports
emphasize that a "skirmish between Armenians and Turks on April
13 set off a riot that resulted in the pillaging of the bazaars
and attacks upon the Armenian quarters." Two days later, more
than 2,000 Armenians had been killed as a result. The outbreaks
spread throughout the district and by the end of the month as
many as 30,000 Armenians were reported killed.
At least one western
historian has suggested that the origins of the Adana Massacre
lie in an Armenian revolt. Erickson has suggested that the April
14 massacre was a product of an Armenian "uprising", rather than
the countercoup.
In those difficult
times for the Ottoman Empire and its citizenry, the Armenians
were also believed to be a target owing to their relative
wealth, and their quarrels with imperial taxation.
The tension erupted
into riots on April 1, 1909, which soon escalated into organized
violence against the Armenian population of
Adana
and in several surrounding cities.
 By April 18, over
1,000 people were reported dead at Adana alone, with additional
unknown casualties in Tarsus and
Alexandretta.
Thousands of refugees filled the American embassy in
Alexandretta, and a British warship was dispatched to its
shores; three French warships were dispatched to
Mersin,
where the situation was "desperate", and many Western consulates
were besieged by Armenian refugees. The Ottoman military was
struggling to subdue the violence.
Similar violence
consumed
Marash
and
Hadjin,
and the estimates of the death toll soon grew to exceed 5,000.
The British cruiser Diana was hoped to provide a "tranquilizing"
effect at the port of Alexandretta, where violence still raged.
Reports surfaced that imperial "authorities are either
indifferent or conniving in the slaughter."
Some order was
restored by April 20, as the disturbance in Mersina had abated,
and the British cruiser Swiftsure was able to deliver
"provisions and medicines intended for Adana". A "threatening"
report from Hadjin indicated that well-armed Armenians were held
up in the town, "beleaguered by Moslem tribesmen who are only
awaiting sufficient numerical strength to rush the improvised
defenses erected by the Armenians." 8,000 refugees filled the
missions of Tarsus, where order had been restored under martial
law, the dead numbering approximately 50.
An April 22 message
from an American missionary in Hadjin indicated that the town
was taking fire intermittently, that surrounding Armenian
properties had been burned, and that siege was inevitable. The
entirety of the Armenian population of Kırıkhan was reported to
have been "slaughtered"; the Armenian village of Deurtyul was
burning and surrounded; additional bloodshed flared up in
Tarsus; massacres were reported in Antioch, and rioting in
Birejik. At least one report praised the "Turkish Government
officials at Mersina" for doing "everything possible to check
the trouble", though "the result of their efforts has been very
limited". As Ottoman authorities worked to contain violence
directed at the Christian minorities of the Empire, the Armenian
population "look(ed) to the Young Turks for future protection."
An American
missionary at Adana during the period, Reverend Herbert Adams
Gibbons of Hartford, described the scene in the days leading up
to the 27th of April:
Adana is in a
pitiable condition. The town has been pillaged and destroyed...
It is impossible to estimate the number of killed. The corpses
lie scattered through the streets. Friday, when I went out, I
had to pick my way between the dead to avoid stepping on them.
Saturday morning I counted a dozen cartloads of Armenian bodies
in one-half hour being carried to the river and thrown into the
water. In the Turkish cemeteries, graves are being dug
wholesale.
On Friday afternoon 250 so-called Turkish reserves, without
officers, seized a train at Adana and compelled the engineer to
convey them to Tarsus, where they took part in the complete
destruction of the Armenian quarter of that town, which is the
best part of Tarsus. Their work of looting was thorough and
rapid.
The Ottoman
government sent in the Army to keep peace, but it was alleged to
have either tolerated the violence or participated in it. A
newspaper report of 3 May 1909 indicated that Ottoman soldiery
had arrived, but did not seem intent upon effecting a peace:
 Adana is terrorized
by 4,000 soldiers, who are looting, shooting, and burning. No
respect is paid to foreign properties. Both French schools have
been destroyed, and it is feared that the American school,
commercial, and missionary interests in Adana are totally
ruined.
The new Governor has not as yet inspired confidence. There is
reason to believe that the authorities still intend to permit
the extermination of all Christians.
Grand
Vizier
Hüseyin Hilmi
Pasha indicated that the massacre was a "political,
not a religious question... Before the Armenian political
committees began to organize in
Asia Minor
there was peace. I will leave you to judge the cause of the
bloodshed." While conceding that his predecessor,
Abdul Hamid II,
had ordered the "extermination of the Armenians", he did
articulate his confidence that "there will never be another
massacre."
In July 1909, the
Young Turk
government announced the trials of various government and
military officials, for "being implicated in the Armenian
massacres". In the ensuing courts-marshal, 124 Muslims and seven
Armenians were executed for their involvement in the violence.
In response to the
counterrevolution and the Armenian massacres in Adana, the CUP
and
Dashnak
concluded an agreement in September 1909 whereby they promised
to "work together for progress, the Constitution, and unity."
Both parties declared that rumor of Armenian efforts toward
independence were false. The Unionists took care to have an
Armenian minister present in the governments formed after 6
August 1909, which could also be interpreted as an attempt to
demonstrate the CUP's distance from the Adana events.
The
government of Turkey, as well as some Turkish writers and
nationalists, dispute this version of history, contending that
the events of April 1909 were in fact an Armenian "rampage of
pillaging and death" targeting the Muslim majority that "ended
up with about 17,000 Armenian and 1,850 Turkish deaths."
Ottoman authorities denied responsibility in the shooting deaths
of two American missionaries in the city of Adana, indicating
instead that "the Armenians" killed Protestant missionaries D.M.
Rogers and Henry Maurer while they "were helping to put out a
fire in the house of a Turkish widow." The Ottoman account of
the killings was later contradicted by an eyewitness, American
priest Stephen Trowbridge of Brooklyn. Trowbridge indicated that
the men were killed by "Moslems" as they attempted to extinguish
a fire threatening to subsume their mission.
The
missionaries found themselves pinned down in their school amidst
the pogrom. According to Elizabeth S. Webb, a missionary
attached to the school, "It was a terrible situation, women and
girls practically alone in the building, a murderous
bloodthirsty mob outside, with knife and bullet for the
Armenians and the torch for their homes."
Mr. Trowbridge
returned from the school to say that the only hope for safety to
any Americans seemed to be to return to the school, staying
there alone, separated from the Armenians. He declared that we
were powerless to save the Armenians. It seems that after we
left the school, Miss Wallace, Mr. Chambers, and a young
Armenian preacher attempted to cross the street from Miss
Wallace's to the school. Just at this time a mob rushed around
the corner. The infuriated Turks recognized the preacher as an
Armenian, and although Mr. Chambers threw his arms about him and
did all in his power to save the man's life, they shot him dead.
Not a single Armenian would they leave alive, the assassins
shouted, as Mr. Chambers dragged the murdered preacher into the
building.
The
British Consul, Charles Hotham Montagu Doughty-Wylie, is
recorded in many sources as having worked strenuously to stop
the massacres, at great personal risk. He was shot in the arm
during the conflagration.
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