In reading about the Armenian genocide, I've been hearing that many Armenians were influenced by Marxism and incited much of the early violence. Is this Turkish bias, or is there any other insight someone might give?

In reading about the Armenian genocide, I've been hearing that many Armenians were influenced by Marxism and incited much of the early violence. Is this Turkish bias, or is there any other insight someone might give?

Unfortunately, I have not researched the Armenian massacres as much as I should, however, I have given it a bit of research and I am familiar with basic Armenian history.  I just looked at the French Wikipedia entry "Génocide arménien" and found this :

"La « prise de conscience » arménienne
En cette fin du xixe siècle, les Arméniens de l'Empire ottoman prennent conscience8 que leurs droits[Lesquels ?] sont bafoués par le sultan, et des groupes arméniens, la plupart du temps révolutionnaires, se forment. Ils dénoncent les méthodes du sultan et veulent la liberté pour tous ainsi que l'égalité entre Arméniens et musulmans. Le parti armenakan est créé en 1885, le parti hentchak (« la cloche ») en 1886 (ou 1887), de tendance socialiste, et la Fédération révolutionnaire arménienne dashnak en 1890 (de tendance relativement indépendantiste). Les adhérents de ces partis ramènent l'espoir chez les Arméniens de l'Empire ottoman (principalement paysans). À l'inverse, l'émancipation voulue par ces partis va être l'un des principaux motifs pour l'empire de massacrer les Arméniens. Des soulèvements de faible ampleur se produisent dans des vilayets dans lesquels beaucoup d'Arméniens vivent — Zeïtoun par exemple — mais la répression ottomane sera sanglante et se terminera par des massacres, préludes du génocide9."

So, according to the entry, most of the organised Armenian political movements were certainly socialist and communist in nature.  That being said, as the excerpt correctly notes, the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire were "principalement paysans" (mostly peasants) who lived in rural villages in the Armenian Highland -- far to the east of Constantinople, in the Lesser Caucausus Mountains and in southern current-day Georgia, in the western portion of Azerbaijan, northwestern Iran, northern Iraq, and throughout eastern Turkey in great numbers -- as well as along the Mediterranean coast in Cilicia, centered around Antioch and the former Armenian Kingdom there.  That is to say, they were mostly a poor rural people living in their traditional lands of Greater Armenia and Lesser Armenia, herding sheep, producing cheese, growing wine, producing cognac, and breeding horses.  Here is a good map :



There was also a large population of Armenians in Constantinople, which is where they were the most cosmopolitan and where the left-wing political parties must have developed.  But I highly doubt that the Armenian peasants living hundreds of miles away from all of that had very much knowledge or interest in Communism.  Unfortunately, they were the ones who suffered for it (though it seems that the Turks did not rely very heavily on the excuse of Armenian communism -- they just seem to have wanted to solidify an ethnically homogenous republican nation-state through massacre and forced deportation).

By the way, fun fact :  Mustafa Kemal Atatürk was a fervent disciple of Montesquieu, just like many of the founders of the United States.

I've been hearing that many Armenians were influenced by Marxism and incited much of the early violence.

I'm pretty sure it was the other way around. Ever hear of the Young Turks? Some say the Young Turks were actually Communist Jєωs masquerading as Turkish elite Muslims. There's a video on the web called "The Jєωιѕн Genocide of Armenian Christians".

The Turks weren't too good to the Lebanese either.

The Turks also massacred tens of thousands of Assyrians in the 1890s, as well as Greeks in the early XXth century.

Quote from: Alex

The Turks weren't too good to the Lebanese either.

The Turks also massacred tens of thousands of Assyrians in the 1890s, as well as Greeks in the early XXth century.

There's a movie about the Turkish killing of Greeks. It is called "Eleni" and stars John Malkovich. Very good movie.

Let's us not lose sight of this fact—the Young "Turks" who ginned up the genocide of Armenians were of the ѕуηαgσgυє of Satan.

Not at all Diego. But I've come to wonder if some of the Armenians brought this on their own people as well, being influenced by the rampant ʝʊdɛօ-Communism which must have been spreading at that time. It would make perfect sense, that they would want the destruction of a Christian Nation like Armenia.

The Turks are Muslim and Muslims want to spread Islamism by force to every nation. I remember my grandmother telling me that when the Turks invaded Lebanon, they made Christians walk separately on one side of the street. She said that they did some bad things to the Christians but I never asked her for the details because, at the time, I was too into my own worldly life to care about stuff like that.

I believe my grandmother's father (or was it her grandfather) was a Christian Turk who migrated to Lebanon and married a Lebanese.