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Concept
Armenian national movement
Summary
The Armenian national movement (Հայ ազգային-ազատագրական շարժում Hay azgayin-azatagrakan sharzhum) included social, cultural, but primarily political and military movements that reached their height during World War I and the following years, initially seeking improved status for Armenians in the Ottoman and Russian Empires but eventually attempting to achieve an Armenian state.
Influenced by the Age of Enlightenment and the rise of nationalism under the Ottoman Empire, the Armenian national movement developed in the early 1860s. Its emergence was similar to that of movements in the Balkan nations, especially the Greek revolutionaries who fought the Greek War of Independence. The Armenian élite and various militant groups sought to defend the mostly rural Christian Armenian population of the eastern Ottoman Empire from banditry and abuses by Muslims, but the ultimate goal was to push for reforms in the six Armenian-populated vilayets of the Ottoman Empire at first, and after this failed, the creation of an Armenian state in the Armenian-populated areas controlled at the time by the Ottoman Empire and the Russian Empire.
Starting in the late 1880s, the movement engaged in guerrilla warfare against the Ottoman government and Kurdish irregulars in the eastern regions of the empire, led by the three Armenian political parties named the Social Democrat Hunchakian Party, the Armenakan Party and the Armenian Revolutionary Federation. Armenians generally saw Russia as their natural ally in the fight against Turks, although Russia maintained an oppressive policy in the Caucasus. Only after losing its presence in Europe after the Balkan Wars, the Ottoman government was forced to sign the Armenian reform package in early 1914, however it was disrupted by World War I.
During World War I, the Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire were systematically exterminated by the government in the Armenian genocide. According to some estimates, from 1894 to 1923, about 1,500,000—2,000,000 Armenians were killed by the Ottoman Empire.
Official source
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