- Title
- Reform or cataclysm? the agreement of 8 February 1914 regarding the Ottoman eastern provinces
- Creator
- Kieser, Hans Lukas; Polatel, Mehmet; Schmutz, Thomas
- Relation
- Journal of Genocide Research Vol. 17, Issue 3, p. 285-304
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14623528.2015.1062283
- Publisher
- Routledge
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2015
- Description
- On 8 February 1914, Ottoman Grand Vizier Said Halim and the Russian chargé d'affaires Konstantin Gulkevich signed a reform project for seven Ottoman eastern provinces that covered roughly half of Asia Minor. This international Reform Agreement differed considerably from a first Russian draft the year before. Though little known by most World War I historians in the West, this agreement was a central but fragile piece for the future of Ottoman coexistence in egalitarian terms in Asia Minor on the eve of World War I. Often called ‘Armenian Reforms’, it was also a last seminal, more or less consensual project of European diplomacy before the latter's breakdown in the July crisis of 1914. Important Ottoman and non-Ottoman protagonists then chose the road towards cataclysm instead of efforts for Ottoman coexistence, reform and international consensus building. The cataclysm of greater Europe in World War I produced various seminal outcomes. One main result in the Levant was a Turkish nation-state in Asia Minor that excluded Asia Minor's Christians and tried to assimilate non-Turkish Muslims, above all Kurds, into ‘Turkdom’. This article argues that the agreement of 1914 had opened for a short time a completely different perspective and that it played a crucial role on the road that led to genocide in spring 1915. Its postulates are still topical.
- Subject
- Ottoman eastern provinces; 1914; Asia Minor; reform agreement; World War I
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1356808
- Identifier
- uon:31792
- Identifier
- ISSN:1462-3528
- Language
- eng
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