The Instrumentalization of Minority Populations in the Middle East: The Cases of the Armenians, the Assyrians, and the Jews Lauren Vieira

The Instrumentalization of Minority Populations in the Middle East: The Cases of the Armenians, the Assyrians, and the Jews By: Lauren Vieira

The First World War culminated with the fall of one of the world’s most enduring empires, ushering in a new international order founded upon Wilsonian principles of liberal internationalism. The Ottoman Empire had fallen into a state of decline in the years preceding the War due in part to European intervention in its internal affairs.1 The British and French, who precipitated the Empire’s decline, constructed plans for its post-war partition; under the auspices of the newly formed League of Nations, the former Ottoman territories fell under the British and French mandates respectively as Iraq and Palestine, and Syria and Lebanon. With the notion of empire having become an anachronism, the nation-state replaced it as the globally endorsed ideal, with the mandates to be conduits to national sovereignty. Under the guise of nation-building, the British and French undertook demographic engineering through the mass transfer of “minority” populations and, when this proved futile, through partitions based on perceived ethnic divides. Laura Robson discusses the international acceptance of ethnonational separatism as a nationbuilding tactic and its imperial abuse in States of Separation: Transfer, Partition, and the Making of the Modern Middle East. 2 She argues that the emerging notions of nationhood and minority protection were used to justify colonialism in the interwar Middle East, instituted through the mandate system and legitimized through the League of Nations. In this paper I will discuss how the Armenian, Assyrian, and Jewish people were instrumentalized by imperial powers to continue the legacy of empire, refashioned under legal and morally righteous terms; I will argue that this was done through the rhetoric of minority protection, the promulgation of notions of cultural and racial superiority, and the imposition of resettlement schemes of which the primary benefactors were imperial regimes. To garner an understanding of the motives behind British and French involvement in the Levant, a study of historical precedents and modern incentives is necessary. Europe’s past is deeply connected to the Arab world, with goods, ideas, and people having been transported bilaterally along the ancient Silk Road.3 As the sun of the British Empire dawned, its trade interests expanded globally; policy towards the Levant and surrounding regions, which the British summarily denominated as the “Middle East”, became increasingly crucial after the arrival of French military leader Napoleon Bonaparte in Egypt in 1798.4 French presence threatened British trade routes to India, resulting in a coalition of British and Ottoman retaliatory forces that expelled the French by 1801.5 The French had held deep economic ties with the region since the early 18th century, for a time occupying the role of its lead trading partner.6 They established colonies in Northern Africa on the Southern banks of the Mediterranean in the early 19th century, solidifying their sphere of influence for the next century to come.7 In the 20th century economic incentives continued to shape British and French interests, escalated by the emergence of oil as a popular commodity and the need for continued access to Middle Eastern goods. Author Elizabeth Monroe describes the psychological incentive of power projection in British Interests in the Middle East. 8 With the rise of fascism and Axis aggression in the years leading up to WWI, the need to appear as a virile nation was more potent than ever, and there was no better way to do so than to maintain a far-reaching neo-empire. Augmented by religious ties to minority groups, both the British and French had strong personal convictions to maintain their Middle Eastern spheres of influence; the Mandate system presented such an opportunity. The term “minority rights” as a descriptor for the rights of a group sharing an ethnic, religious, and cultural identity not held by the majority of their state’s population had been attached to external intervention since the capitulation agreements of the Ottoman Empire.9 The capitulations were privileges bestowed upon European powers by the Ottomans wherein foreigners within the empire would be granted extraterritoriality; this led to a proliferation of commercial colonies in Ottoman lands, primarily under the auspices of the British and French. Upon the Empire’s fall and subsequent division by the British and French,10 minorities became a means of justifying continued interference in the Middle East. Notions of ethnic transfer and resettlement were tied to imperial uses under the guise of

minority protection and nation-building. This rhetoric and the Armenians as while they all played an active was employed as a solution to the problems of minority role and sought independence, Zionists advocated the resettlement when dealing with the Armenian, Assyrian, importation of their people into an already occupied and Jewish populations displaced after 1918. The Arme- land. In effect, the Zionists endeavoured to construct a nians and Assyrians, who were administered respectively nation, while the Assyrians and Armenians endeavby the French and British mandates, were predominant- oured to achieve recognition for their existing ones. ly Christian groups situated in refugee camps during The Zionist movement, which gained prominence as a World War I in Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon.11 In these coherent international movement in the late 19th cencamps, officials encouraged nationalism through the tury,16 encouraged the mass resettlement of Jewish peoconstruction of ethnic-based education systems and the ple to a region where they could establish their own separation of refugees from surrounding Arab popula- sovereign ethnonational state. Seeing Zionism as a way tions in an effort to preserve national and religious iden- to employ tactics of minority transfer, the British oftities; by preventing assimilation, the Great Powers en- fered their support to the movement in the Balfour sured the continued existence of minority populations, Declaration of 1917; Lord Arthur Balfour had been receptive to European aid. persuaded to pledge British support by Chaim WeizAssyrian and Armenian nationalisms had been mann, a prominent Zionist and the future president of developing of their own accord for many years. The an- Israel.17 Though sharing the notion of a Jewish national cestors of both ethnic groups had adopted Christianity identity and a need for this to be expressed, there were as their religion in the early years of the Common Era, internal divisions in the Zionist ideology of which one positing them as a minority in a region largely populated proved most beneficial to the British: Zionist territoriby Muslims. The Assyrians presided relatively peacefully alism. When this narrowed the scope of the movement with their neighbours in Iraq up until the mid-19th cen- to the creation of a nation-state in the area under the tury; European missionaries infiltrated the region and British Mandate of Palestine, the British correspondactively pitted the Christian Assyrians against the Mus- ingly encouraged Jewish immigration there, regarding it lim Kurds by providing the former with extensive assis- as an opportunity to transfer a cooperative group of tance so as to solidify their connection to God through white, educated people into the Middle East.18 The Zithe trials and tribulations of a contrived holy war.12 This onists, who understood the colonial desires of the Britaid was readily accepted, as the steadfastly religious As- ish, accordingly employed the interwar era’s liberal imsyrians saw European Christians as the vanguard of the perialist rhetoric to garner their support. Christian world. Against a backdrop of increasing re- The indigenous Palestinians, considered part of gional tensions and the eruption of international ones in the barbaric Muslims of the Middle East and unworthy WWI, both the Assyrians and the Kurds came to envi- of national minority status, suffered under the influx of sion themselves as ethnic states worthy of recognition; Jewish immigrants as they were unable to mobilize pothe Assyrians even possessed their own armed forces, litically in comparison to the Zionists; this was unwho acted as an arm of the British and French govern- doubtedly due to the British support for Jewish instituments by policing the region and suppressing Arab and tions and the fact that the transfer of power from the Kurdish rebellions.13 The Armenians did not seek to Arabs over to the Zionists was written into the Palescarve out a distinct nation for themselves immediately; tinian mandate.19 As citizenship became tied to ethniciat first, they merely pursued an acknowledgement of ty in the world of nation-states, this would leave the their rights from the Ottoman government and an end Arab Palestinians stateless. This realization was met to attacks on Assyrian communities.14 It is important to with riots in the 1920s and 1930s as they believed their note that, under the Ottoman system, Christians were livelihoods threatened.20 In response, the British administration attempted a balancing act of Palestinian not granted equal status with their Muslim compatriots, as they paid higher taxes and were attacked by the and Jewish interests, publishing the Peel Commission’s Kurds with impunity from the Ottoman legal system.15 report in 1937 which detailed intractable tensions After the genocide of the Armenians during WWI, plaguing the Mandate and proposed its partition into Christian solidarity and sympathy solidified and came to independent Arab and Jewish states; this paved the way buttress the rhetoric of minority protection upheld by for the eventual United Nations partition plan of 1947, the Mandate Powers. after the Mandate’s termination.21 To the selfThe relationship between Zionists and the Brit- purported promoters of democracy, the Arabs with ish was one which was symbiotic and pursued heavily by their different religion and culture seemed to be an both parties; this differs from the cases of the Assyrians anachronism in the new world order many Western

powers believed was underway. The Jews, on the other hand, fit the League of Nations’ liberal narrative and were cooperative, and even friendly, with the British throughout the Palestinian mandate. Minority status was not granted to all populations who constituted a demographic minority within a state; for example, the Kurds, who formed a minority with a distinct language and culture, were not granted minority rights under the British mandate.22 The primary reason for this selectivity was their racial and religious composition. Central to the European support of the Armenians and Assyrians was their shared Christianity with the Western world.23 Though faced with increasing anti-Semitism within Europe, Jews were considered useful to the imperial establishment and were declared national minorities. They were thought of as “white settlers” that would cooperate with the British government in return for the promise of aid in their nationalist goals. Robson discusses racial superiority and prejudice against Arabs in States of Separation, stating that British and French mandate governments “...tended to group together Jewish, Armenian, and Assyrian diasporas as representatives of “civilization and modernity in regions generally lacking both.”24 These ‘civilizing missions’ were by no means a new invention, and the racial and religious superiority of the Great Powers and the League of Nations highlighted the irony of institutions proclaiming to be spreading liberal democracy and promoting sovereignty whilst simultaneously maintaining as firm a group as they could on empire. With regards to resettlement, European powers often ignored the desires of the populations on the ground. This was exacerbated by the role of the diaspora communities scattered throughout Europe who voiced opinions on the settlement of communities to which they belonged to abstractly. Proceeding World War I, the concept of assimilation lost its appeal in favour of the homogenous nation-state due to the promulgation of Wilsonian ideals. This included the spread of democracy through the self-determination of people united by nationality or ethnicity. The Allied powers and the League thus began their attempts at separating the multifarious ethnic and religious groups of the Middle East, through resettlement schemes to alienate them from their regional oppressors; these minorities, however, were not given much say, as is evidenced by the eruption of Assyrian refugee protests against the resettlement and segregation forced upon them by the mandates.25 The desires of many refugees for assimilation in Iraq and Lebanon were ignored in favour of bolstering the European claim as a regional arbitrator. Even as the Assyrians lobbied for integration into Iraq and a return to Hakkari, the French mandate, along with the voices of their Europeanized diaspora community, lobbied instead for the separatist movement. Robson states how these plans “...reflected the anxieties and needs of a diaspora community trying to demonstrate its whiteness, Christianity, and “civilization” in the context of an often xenophobic and hostile host country that tended to understand Middle Eastern immigrants as part of an undifferentiated Muslim barbarism.”26 This highlights the entrenched racialization of Europeanoriented diasporas, and their lack of authority to represent the desires of those undergoing the lived experience of fighting for their identity in a region delineated by borders drawn up with little regard to the realities of the ground. Lobbying for the creation of an ethnic nation-state for their own benefit rather than for those undergoing the lived experience, the diasporas sought to reduce prejudice and bolster their reputation within their host nations. The mandate system engaged in what can only be described as neocolonialism in the fledgling states of the interwar Middle East. Employing popular nationalist rhetoric of the era, the British and French garnered support for their continued presence in the region by positing themselves as protectors of minorities and chairmen of a new global order. The “minority” title was assigned to the Christian minorities in the Middle East and the white Jewish settlers as they were deemed culturally superior to the local Arab population. Moreover, the projection of their superiority on the global scale provided further fodder for the role of the mandates in their protection. While putting forth a noble image, the British and French paradoxically ignored the pleas of actual inhabitants of the Middle East in favour of appealing to their European diaspora counterparts; it was they who formed voting constituencies and held sway in domestic politics, but whose lived experience was nonexistent. The actions and ideology of these European powers have left a legacy in the region which remains potent to this day. For instance, the intractable problem of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can be directly linked to the early dealing of the British, while regional conflict between disparate ethnic and religious groups shoddily grouped together within a fabricated ‘nation’ plagues the region to this day. This is not to mention the continued intervention of foreign powers in the Middle East under pretenses incredibly similar to those of the mandate era; the same rhetoric of bringing democracy to the region was used to justify the Iraq and Afghanistan wars by the United States, while nearly all ‘Great Powers’ seek to maintain a foothold in MENA to assure their continued access to oil and oth-

-er resources. The liberal international order first attributed to Woodrow Wilson remains a dominant worldview today, often with devastating impacts for developing countries as their needs are often expendable in the pursuit of capitalist ends.

Notes

17Reinharz, Jehuda Reinharz, "The Balfour Declaration and Its Maker: A Reassessment," The Journal of Modern History 64, no. 3 (1992): 455, accessed March 31, 2021, http://www.jstor.org/ stable/2124595.

18Laura Robson, “The Transfer Solution, ” in States of Separation, 128-130.

19 Robson, Laura, “The Partition Solution,” in States of Separation, 192.

1 Isa Blumi, "Reorientating European Imperialism: How Ottomanism Went Global," Die Welt Des Islams 56, no. 3/4 (2016): 292-294, accessed April 10, 2021, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24893995. 2Laura Robson, States of Separation Transfer, Partition, and the Making of the Modern Middle East, 1st ed., Ewing: University of California Press, 2017. 3Ursula Sims-Williams, "The Silk Road: Trade, Travel, War and Faith," Bulletin of the Asia Institute, New Series, 15 (2001): 163, accessed April 10, 2021, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24049044. 4Güven Dinç, "The Ports of Cyprus and the French Invasion of Egypt (1798–1801)," Mediterranean Studies 24, no. 1 (2016): 24, accessed April 5, 2021, doi:10.5325/mediterraneanstu.24.1.0023. 5Ibid, 25-29. 6Arthur Leon Horniker, "Anglo-French Rivalry in the Levant from 1583 to 1612," The Journal of Modern History 18, no. 4 (1946): 291, accessed April 10, 2021, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1876305. 7Salam Al Quntar, "Repatriation and the Legacy of Colonialism in the Middle East," Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology & Heritage Studies 5, no. 1 (2017): 19, accessed April 10, 2021, doi:10.5325/jeasmedarcherstu.5.1.0019. 8Elizabeth Monroe, "British Interests in the Middle East." Middle East Journal 2, no. 2 (1948): 132-33, accessed April 10, 2021, http:// www.jstor.org/stable/4321964. 9Laura Robson, “Origins,” in States of Separation Transfer, Partition, and the Making of the Modern Middle East, 61–62, (Ewing: University of California Press, 2017). 10Ibid, 28.

11Laura Robson, “The Refugee Regime,” in States of Separation, 7885. 20Penny Sinanoglou, "British Plans for the Partition of Palestine, 1929-1938," The Historical Journal 52, no. 1 (2009): 132, accessed March 30, 2021, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40264161. 21Penny Sinanoglou, "British Plans for the Partition of Palestine, 1929-1938," The Historical Journal 52, no. 1 (2009): 145-50, accessed March 30, 2021, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40264161.

22Laura Robson, “The Refugee Regime,” in States of Separation, 84.

23Laura Robson, “Origins,” in States of Separation, 32.

24Laura Robson, “Diasporas and Homelands,” in States of Separation, 254.

25Laura Robson, “The Refugee Regime,” in States of Separation, 103.

26Laura Robson, “The Transfer Solution,” in States of Separation, 253.

12Petrosian Vahram, "Assyrians in Iraq," Iran & the Caucasus 10, no. 1 (2006): 118-19, accessed April 10, 2021, http://www.jstor.org/ stable/4030946. 13Andrekos Varnava, "French and British Post-War Imperial Agendas and Forging an Armenian Homeland After the Genocide: The Formation of the Légion d’Orient in Octobr 1916,” The Historical Journal 57, no. 4 (2014): 999, accessed April 10, 2021, http:// www.jstor.org/stable/24531973.

14Ahsan I Butt, "The Ottoman Empire’s Escalation from Reforms to the Armenian Genocide, 1908–1915," in Secession and Security: Explaining State Strategy against Separatists, 130, Ithaca; London: Cornell University Press, 2017, accessed April 2, 2021, http:// www.jstor.org/stable/10.7591/j.ctt1w0d9w9.9. 15Ibid. 16William L. Cleveland, and Martin Bunton, “Part Three: The Struggle for Independence,” in A History of the Modern Middle East, 4th ed., 242 (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2009.

Al Quntar, Salam. "Repatriation and the Legacy of Colonialism in the Middle East." Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology & Heritage Studies 5, no. 1 (2017): 19-26. Accessed April 10, 2021. doi:10.5325/ jeasmedarcherstu.5.1.0019.

Blumi, Isa. "Reorientating European Imperialism: How Ottomanism Went Global." Die Welt Des Islams 56, no. 3/4 (2016): 290-316. Accessed April 10, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24893995.

Burrows, Mathew. "'Mission Civilisatrice': French Cultural Policy in the Middle East, 1860-1914." The Historical Journal 29, no. 1 (1986): 109-35. Accessed April 10, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2639258.

Butt, Ahsan I. "The Ottoman Empire’s Escalation from Reforms to the Armenian Genocide, 1908–1915." In Secession and Security: Explaining State Strategy against Separatists, 125-62. Ithaca; London: Cornell University Press, 2017. Accessed April 10, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7591/j.ctt1w0d9w9.9.

Cleveland, William L., and Martin Bunton. A History of the Modern Middle East. 4th ed. Boulder , CO: Westview Press, 2009.

Dinç, Güven. "The Ports of Cyprus and the French Invasion of Egypt (1798–1801)." Mediterranean Studies 24, no. 1 (2016): 23-46. Accessed April 10, 2021. doi:10.5325/mediterraneanstu.24.1.0023.

Horniker, Arthur Leon. "Anglo-French Rivalry in the Levant from 1583 to 1612." The Journal of Modern History 18, no. 4 (1946): 289-305. Accessed April 10, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1876305.

Lewis, Bernard. "The Ottoman Empire and Its Aftermath." Journal of Contemporary History 15, no. 1 (1980): 27-36. Accessed April 10, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/260456.

Monroe, Elizabeth. "British Interests in the Middle East." Middle East Journal 2, no. 2 (1948): 129-46. Accessed April 10, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4321964.

Pamuk, Şevket. "Institutional Change and the Longevity of the Ottoman Empire, 1500-1800." The Journal of Interdisciplinary History 35, no. 2 (2004): 225-47. Accessed April 10, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3656813.

Reinharz, Jehuda. "The Balfour Declaration and Its Maker: A Reassessment." The Journal of Modern History 64, no. 3 (1992): 455-99. Accessed April 10, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2124595.

Robson, Laura. States of Separation Transfer, Partition, and the Making of the Modern Middle East. 1st ed. Ewing: University of California Press, 2017.

Sartori, Andrew. "The British Empire and Its Liberal Mission." The Journal of Modern History 78, no. 3 (2006): 62342. Accessed April 10, 2021. doi:10.1086/509149.

Sims-Williams, Ursula. "The Silk Road: Trade, Travel, War and Faith." Bulletin of the Asia Institute, New Series, 15 (2001): 163-70. Accessed April 10, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24049044.

Sinanoglou, Penny. "British Plans for the Partition of Palestine, 1929-1938." The Historical Journal 52, no. 1 (2009): 131-52. Accessed April 10, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40264161.

Thayer, Lucius Ellsworth. "The Capitulations of the Ottoman Empire and the Question of Their Abrogation as It Affects the United States." The American Journal of International Law 17, no. 2 (1923): 207-33. Accessed April 10, 2021. doi:10.2307/2188106.

Vahram Petrosian. "Assyrians in Iraq." Iran & the Caucasus 10, no. 1 (2006): 113-47. Accessed April 10, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4030946.

Varnava, Andrekos. "French and British Post-War Imperial Agendas and Forging an Armenian Homeland After the Genocide: The Formation of the Légion d’Orient in Octobr 1916.” The Historical Journal 57, no. 4 (2014): 997-1025. Accessed April 10, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24531973.

Woodhouse, C. M. "Britain and the Middle East." Pakistan Horizon 62, no. 1 (2009): 81-106. Accessed April 10, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24711057.