Armenia

Summary

In the King-Crane Commission Report, Armenia is one of the areas the January 30, 1919 resolutions require to be “completely severed from the Turkish Empire”, and Section Three argues at length for a separate Armenian State under a strong, long-term mandatory, on the ground of the Armenian massacres of 1915-16 and the demonstrated unfitness of Turkish rule over others (Report of the American Section of the Inter-Allied Commission on Mandates in Turkey, lines 4955-5908).

Details

• In Cilicia, the Armenians heard by the Commission (chiefly Turkish-speaking) asked for the union of Cilicia with Armenia under an American mandate (Report of the American Section of the Inter-Allied Commission on Mandates in Turkey, lines 3831-3870 approx.).
• The Report holds a separate Armenian State to be the Peace Conference’s deliberate intention, citing the appointment of Colonel Haskell as High Commissioner in Armenia for the four Great Powers and Major General Harbord’s mission to investigate conditions in Armenia (lines 5561-5750 approx.).
• The State proposed is expressly not the rule of an Armenian minority over a majority of others: it is an area Armenians could enter with assurance of never being put under Turkish rule, under a Mandatory Government that should not withdraw until Armenians constituted an actual majority of the population, or at least until Turks were fewer than Armenians, so full Armenian self-government would be long delayed and the mandate cannot be short-term (lines 5751-5908).
• The Armenians are recorded as desiring an American mandate for Armenia; Dr. Albert H. Lybyer’s statement on the State’s extent and boundaries, adopted as the Commissioners’ own, begins by taking the area from both Turkish and Russian territory and taking into account Armenian losses by the massacres of 1894-6, 1908-9 and 1915-16, estimated at one million (lines 5751-5908).
• Lybyer’s completed statement (part 3) rejects the large Armenia from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean as probably impossible: Armenians never exceeded about 25 per cent of such an area before 1914, are reduced to about 10 per cent allowing for survivors’ return, and would reach only about one-fourth even with optimistic migration; it proposes instead the highlands in Turkish and Russian territory with a Black Sea outlet, where a majority is held attainable within a few years. Six appended population tables (Magie and Westermann’s pre-1914 figures projected to 1920 and 1925, with Lynch’s figures for Russian Armenia) conclude that by 1925 Armenians could be a small majority in a smaller-basis Armenia — 1,536,000 of 3,047,000 with Russian Armenia at 50 per cent as printed — but would not exceed 40 per cent in a larger one. Two printed rows of the tables do not sum to their own totals; the conflicts are held on the source page under Open questions (Report of the American Section of the Inter-Allied Commission on Mandates in Turkey, lines 5909-6408).
• Section Three’s recommendations propose the Armenian State’s formation under a Mandatary as recommendation 1, Cilicia not being separated from Anatolia at present, and its inclusion in a general single mandate for Asia Minor asked of the United States, which the Commissioners argue America cannot wisely refuse the surrounding mandates if she takes Armenia’s; six conditions for American acceptance are stated, including Turkey’s encouraging repatriation and making all possible just reparation (lines 7409-7760 approx.).

Related pages

Report of the American Section of the Inter-Allied Commission on Mandates in Turkey, King-Crane Commission, Albert H. Lybyer