Mike Phipps reviews The Righteous and People of Conscience of the Armenian Genocide, by Gérard Dédéyan, Ago Demirdjian and Nabil Saleh, published by Hurst

This might look like a rather obscure book, but in a region where Turkish President Erdogan has proclaimed his foreign policy as neo-Ottomanism, it has a real contemporary importance. Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has a clear interpretation of what Turkey’s policy means: “to continue the Armenian genocide.”

That genocide is the subject of this book. It tells the stories of the Muslims, Christians, Jews and others who made a courageous stand against the mass slaughter of Ottoman Armenians in 1915, the first modern genocide. As Yves Ternon states in the Preface, “they followed the dictates of their conscience in refusing to collaborate with these crimes, refusing to remain silent, refusing to avert their gaze. Government officials, dignitaries and ordinary subjects of the Ottoman Empire alike put themselves in harm’s way, risking punishment or losing their livelihoods, if not their lives.”

There had been earlier massacres of Armenians. French Socialist Jean Jaurès was one of the more prominent internationalists who denounced this “‘war of extermination”, along with the passive stance of he European powers towards it, which undoubtedly green-lighted future atrocities.

 But unlike earlier massacres, the genocide that took place during World War One was carefully planned, executed and camouflaged. It’s estimated that between 800,000 and 1.2 million were sent on death marches to the Syrian desert in 1915 and 1916, followed by a further series of massacres.

Standard histories say that national, regional and local levels of governance cooperated with the genocide. This book foregrounds those who did not – the “Righteous and People of Conscience” of the title.

One of these righteous was Hüseyin Nesimî Bey, who was mayor of the small town of Lice. Ordered  to exterminate the Armenians in his area, he responded, “I will have no part in this sin.” Having been unable to prevent the departure of the first deportation convoy, he chose to accompany it in person in order to protect the Armenians from attacks by armed gangs. He also managed to save some Armenian women from deportation by arranging sham marriages with elderly Muslim men. He was murdered on the orders of Mehmed Reshid, the principal organiser of the genocide in the district. Other resistors met the same fate at Reshid’s hands.

Mutasarrif Ali Suad was a sub-prefect for the Euphrates region where the main concentration camps were based. Under his administration, Armenians were granted real protection. He ordered the construction of sixty ovens to feed the starving Armenians in his jurisdiction and a large hospital, giving the work to Armenian craftsmen who were paid with food, until he was eventually dismissed for his humanitarianism. There was a rare memorial to this benevolence and the Armenian genocide, which was dynamited by Islamic State during the Syrian civil war in 2014.

Mehmet Celal Bey was known as the ‘Turkish Oskar Schindler’. When the Armenian genocide began, Celal Bey was Governor of Aleppo. He immediately realised the deadly significance of the deportations and denounced them, while attempting to mitigate the extremity of the orders he received. He notably refused to deport the Armenians of Antioch and did everything in his power to save two Armenian members of the Ottoman Parliament, refusing to transfer them to Diyarbekir. After Celal Bey was forced to resign, they were later murdered on the journey.

Transferred to Konya, Belal Bey continued to block the deportation of Armenians and bring the scale of the atrocity to the attention of European powers.  It’s estimated that he prevented the forced departure of some 30,000 Armenians from Konya, but this defiance ended with his dismissal in October 1915.

Not just government officials, but many ordinary Turks risked their lives, whether out of friendship or compassion, to rescue or keep safe Armenian families. Some of their stories are also recounted here.

Mention is also made of some of the western humanitarians, particularly women, who helped Armenians at this time. Swiss missionary Beatrice Rohner saved nearly 1,000 orphans, “who with other survivors would be the driving force behind the post-war survival of the Armenian nation.”  She also helped hundreds of deportees who would have perished without the money she was able to smuggle to them through her network of courageous messengers.

Anna Hedvig Büll, another missionary, saved an estimated 2,000 women and children and kept meticulous records about the families involved. She wrote daily, in a range of languages, to European consulates, missions and numerous humanitarian organisations about the genocidal policy. Physically threatened by the Turkish authorities herself, she told them, “that if anything should happen to me, they would be obliged to provide an explanation to international bodies.”

Danish teacher Karen Jeppe is also credited with saving thousands of Armenian lives, disguising some and hiding others in the cellars of her own house in Urfa. After raising funds in Europe, she also managed to buy back large numbers of Armenian women who had been sold into slavery and establish rehabilitation centres, medical services and food supplies for the refugees, as well as orphanages, clinics and schools.

As well as the individual stories, there is a huge amount of knowledge gathered here about the role of different ethnic groups and religions, many of which defended the Armenians during these appalling events. It’s hard to imagine this book becoming a bestseller, but the painstaking research displayed here nonetheless deserves a wide audience.

Meanwhile, the ordeal of the Armenian people continues in new forms. Little reported in the mainstream media, Azerbaijan’s current blockade of the largely Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh has now lasted for over 200 days. The conflict has complex origins but one thing is indisputable: there is now a looming humanitarian emergency for the ethnic Armenian civilians in the enclave as food, energy and medical care become increasingly scarce.  Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, have strongly condemned the blockade, which many Armenians see as being encouraged by an expansionist Turkey, enthusiastically reprising its long policy of persecution.

Mike Phipps’ book Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow: The Labour Party after Jeremy Corbyn (OR Books, 2022) can be ordered here.