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Armenian Genocide
Background
Armenians in the Ottoman Empire · Armenian Question · Hamidian Massacres · Zeitun Resistance (1895) · 1896 Ottoman Bank Takeover · Yıldız Attempt · Adana Massacre · Young Turk Revolution
The Genocide
Armenian notables deported from the Ottoman capital · Tehcir Law · Armenian casualties of deportations · Ottoman Armenian casualties  · Labour battalion
Major extermination centers: Bitlis · Deir ez-Zor · Diyarbakır · Erzurum · Kharput · Muş · Sivas · Trabzon
Resistance: Zeitun  · Van · Musa Dagh · Urfa · Shabin-Karahisar · Armenian militia
Foreign aid and relief: Reactions · American Committee for Relief in the Near East
Responsible parties
Young Turks: Talat · Enver · Djemal · Committee of Union and Progress · Teskilati Mahsusa · The Special Organization · Ottoman Army · Kurdish Irregulars · Topal Osman
Aftermath
Courts-Martial · Operation Nemesis · Partitioning of the Ottoman Empire · Denial of the Genocide
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The Adana massacre occurred in Adana Province, in the Ottoman Empire, in April 1909. A religious-ethnic clash^[1] 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 20,000 to 30,000 deaths.^{[2][3][4][5][6]}

Contents 1 Origins 2 Bloodshed 3 Disputation and partiality of media 4 See also 5 References 6 External links

In 1908, the Young Turk government came to power in a bloodless revolution. Within a year, Turkey's Armenian population, feeling itself empowered by the dismissal of Abdul Hamid II, began demonstrating in support of the new government's stance favoring Armenian rights, placing them at last 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.^[7] 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 newspaper report of 15 April 1909,

With the plea of reform (the Young Turks) won the Turkish Army over to Liberalism. But now again is heard the cry of Mohammedanism centuries old: "Where the sword is, there is our faith."^[8]

According to one source, when news of a mutiny in Istanbul arrived in Adana, rumors started to circulate among the overheated Muslim population of an imminent Armenian insurrection. By April 14 the Armenian quarter was attacked by the mob, and many thousands of Armenians were killed.^[9]

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.^[10] The outbreaks spread throughout the district and by the end of the month as many as 30,000 Armenians were reported killed.^[11][12]

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.^[13]

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.^[14] Thousands of refugees filled the American embassy in Alexandretta, and a British warship was dispatched to its shores; three French warships were dispatched to Mersina, where the situation was "desperate", and many Western consulates were besieged by Armenian refugees.^[15] 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.^[16] The British cruiser Diana was hoped to provide a "tranquilizing" effect at the port of Alexandretta, where violence still raged.^[17] Reports surfaced that imperial "authorities are either indifferent or conniving in the slaughter."^[18]

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".^[19] 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."^[20] 8,000 refugees filled the missions of Tarsus, where order had been restored under martial law, the dead numbering approximately 50.^[21]

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.^[22] 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".^[23] 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."^[24]

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.^[25]

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.^[26]

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."^[27] 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."^[28]

In July 1909, the Young Turk government announced the trials of various government and military officials, for "being implicated in the Armenian massacres".^[29][30]

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"^[31] targeting the Muslim majority that "ended up with about 17,000 Armenian and 1,850 Turkish deaths."^[32]

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."^[33] Western media was often skeptical of Ottoman equivocation and denial, particularly in the instance of the shooting of the missionaries, as many American missionaries had been inundating the newspaper with tales of wanton carnage perpetrated against the Christian minority; the New York Times, for instance, while noting Ottoman denial of responsibility in the killing of Maurer and Rogers, nonetheless attributed their deaths to "Moslem fanatics".^[34]

The Ottoman account of the killings was later contradicted by an eyewitness, American priest Stephen Trowbridge of Brooklyn.^[35] Trowbridge indicated that the men were killed by "Moslems" as they attempted to extinguish a fire threatening to subsume their mission.^[36]

Western media often rendered the massacres as a struggle between Christianity and the Muslim world, a "Christian martyrdom".^[37] While the Sultan resisted the attribution of religious motives to the killings, several Protestant missionaries and European Christians died in the massacres, and several Protestant and Jesuit churches and schools were destroyed.^[38]

• Hamidian massacres
• Armenian Genocide
• Anti-Armenianism
• Countercoup (1909)

• The Red Rugs Of Tarsus - A Woman’s Record of the Armenian Massacre of 1909
• Adana Massacre