The Committees Before 1915: Hunchak, Dashnak and the Armed Revolts in the Ottoman Record

Why It Matters

The Hunchak (founded 1887) and Dashnaksutyun (founded 1890) were revolutionary committees that adopted organised armed action against the Ottoman state decades before the First World War. Their record, from the 1890 Kumkapı demonstration to the 1896 Ottoman Bank raid, is documented in Ottoman, Armenian, British and Russian sources. It does not settle the modern argument over the Events of 1915, but that argument cannot be understood without it.

Background

Centuries of coexistence

Ottoman Armenians lived inside the empire for roughly a millennium of Seljuk, Anatolian beylik and Ottoman rule. Within the millet system they kept their own church, schools and courts. The Ottoman state is often said to have called them the millet-i sadıka (the loyal community). The Prussian officer Helmuth von Moltke, who served in the empire in 1835–1839, described Armenians as prosperous and well integrated. Armenian families such as the Balyans (imperial architects of Dolmabahçe Palace), the Dadians and the Duzians held senior positions in building, industry and the mint. Armenians were a large minority in the eastern provinces but, on Ottoman census figures, were less than 20% of the population there. Armenian Patriarchate counts were higher, and the exact figures remain contested.

1878: the turning point

The Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878 changed the setting. The Treaty of San Stefano (March 1878) included a clause on reforms in Armenian-inhabited provinces under Russian oversight. The Congress of Berlin (July 1878) replaced it with Article 61 of the Treaty of Berlin. That article obliged the Porte to carry out reforms and to protect Armenians from Kurdish and Circassian abuses, and it required the Great Powers to supervise implementation. Armenian delegates, including Mkrtich Khrimian, returned from Berlin convinced that petitions alone achieved little. Many Armenians complained that Article 61 was never enforced. Ottoman officials, for their part, saw the clause as an instrument of foreign interference.

The committees

• Hunchak (Social Democrat Hunchakian Party), 1887, Geneva. Its programme aimed at an independent Armenia in eastern Anatolia through revolution. It explicitly listed terror against officials and informers as a method.
• Dashnaksutyun (Armenian Revolutionary Federation), 1890, Tbilisi. It began as a federation of groups and developed an armed wing. It built networks of fedayi (irregular fighters) and smuggled arms from the Russian Caucasus.

Chronology of the armed phase

Kumkapı, 1890. During a service at the Kumkapı church, activists associated with the Hunchak committee turned the event into a political protest. They read a protest against the Porte and clashed with police. The incident showed the committees' intention to force international attention.

1893. Seditious placards appeared in Merzifon, and unrest followed in Yozgat and Kayseri. Ottoman authorities arrested committee agents. Foreign missionary institutions, including Anatolia College in Merzifon, were caught up in the investigations.

Sasun, 1894. Hunchak organisers such as Mihran Damadian and Hampartsum Boyadjian ('Murad') were active among villagers in the Sasun mountains, where tax disputes with local Kurdish tribes were already acute. Ottoman regular troops and irregulars suppressed the rising, and Armenian villagers suffered heavy casualties. A commission with British, French and Russian delegates examined the events in 1895.

Ottoman Bank, 1896. Dashnak militants led by Papken Siuni and Karekin Pastırmacıyan (known as Armen Garo) seized the Imperial Ottoman Bank in Istanbul and took hostages. They demanded European intervention. Diplomats negotiated their departure by yacht. In the following days, mob violence killed many Armenian residents of the capital; estimates run from several thousand upward.

The wider Hamidian context

The committees' campaign unfolded alongside the violence of 1894–1896, in which widely cited Western estimates put Armenian deaths between roughly 100,000 and 300,000. Armenian historians stress this violence and the creation of the Hamidiye irregular cavalry in 1891 as the causes of radicalisation. Ottoman records stress committee attacks and provocations as the cause of the clashes. Both accounts agree that civilians paid the heaviest price.

Alliance and rupture, 1908–1914

After the 1908 Young Turk revolution, the Dashnaks cooperated with the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), and Armen Garo sat in the Ottoman parliament as deputy for Erzurum. At the Erzurum congress in August 1914, Ottoman emissaries reportedly asked the Dashnaks to organise Armenians in Russia against the Tsar in case of war. Dashnak leaders declined and said Ottoman Armenians would fulfil their duties as citizens while Russian Armenians would serve in the Russian army. The episode shows that the Armenian political world was not uniform.

The First World War and the volunteer units

From late 1914, the Russian Caucasus Army raised Armenian volunteer detachments (druzhinas) under commanders such as Andranik Ozanian, Dro (Drastamat Kanayan), Hamazasp Srvandztian and Keri. Armen Garo left the Ottoman side and joined the Russian army. Ottoman Armenians also deserted or took up arms behind the front, and the Van uprising of April 1915 led to a Russian-backed Armenian administration in the city. Ottoman archives and Turkish historians record attacks by these units and local bands on Muslim villages and on supply lines in Van, Erzurum and Bitlis. Muslim civilians also died in large numbers from massacre, famine and disease. Armenian historians generally describe the volunteers as defending a threatened population and reject treating them as representative of all Armenians.

The Relocation and Resettlement Law followed on 27 May 1915 and was published in the official gazette Takvim-i Vekayi on 1 June 1915. Its text and its implementation are examined in The Worldlogue's study of the 1915 law.

Key Players & Positions

• The Ottoman state. Official correspondence from the Yıldız and later Interior Ministry files treats the committees as insurgent organisations backed by outside powers. The state combined repression with partial reforms.
• The Hunchak and Dashnak committees. Their own programmes and memoirs state independence or autonomy as the goal and violence as a legitimate method. Dashnak leaders later acknowledged the 1896 raid as a deliberate attempt to force European intervention.
• The Armenian Patriarchate and many Ottoman Armenians. Church leaders and many community notables repeatedly sought reform within the empire. Some openly feared that the committees' actions would bring reprisals on ordinary Armenians.
• Russia, Britain and France. Each used the 'Armenian question' as a diplomatic lever. Russia in particular armed and organised volunteer units on the Caucasus front.
• Armenian historiography. Scholars such as Louise Nalbandian (The Armenian Revolutionary Movement, 1963) document the committees' methods in detail. The dominant Armenian reading places them within a defensive response to persecution and treats 1915 as a premeditated genocide.
• Turkish historiography. It reads the committees as the first stage of a revolutionary programme that, under wartime conditions and Russian invasion, created a security emergency.

Source Comparison

No single source type is sufficient. The sources that can be checked against each other are the Ottoman files, the committees' own publications, consular and missionary letters, and the Russian military records. The broader archive debate is surveyed in the analyses by Monitor of Nations and Regional Order.

Key Terms & Related Guides

• Hunchak: the Social Democrat Hunchakian Party, founded in Geneva in 1887. Hunchak means 'bell'.
• Dashnaksutyun (ARF): the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, founded in Tbilisi in 1890.
• Fedayi: irregular armed fighters of the committees, for example Andranik, Dro, Hamazasp, Paramaz and Sabah Gülyan.
• Article 61: the clause of the 1878 Treaty of Berlin on reforms in the Armenian provinces.
• Sevk ve İskân Kanunu: the Relocation and Resettlement Law of 27 May 1915.
• Dolus specialis: the specific intent required under the 1948 Genocide Convention.

Related reading: after 1965, successor currents carried the dispute into a new phase of political violence, covered in The Forgotten File on ASALA and JCAG-ARA. For the wider archive and normalisation debate, see Archive of Nations. Our method for separating fact from position is set out in Editorial Principles and About The Unspoken File. Common questions are answered in the Reader FAQ.

The Unspoken File publishes this analysis from a perspective that presents and defends Türkiye's official positions and legal theses, and we state this openly to our readers. Claims are attributed to primary sources such as treaty texts, UN documents, archival records and official statements, so that readers can verify them independently.

— The Unspoken File Editorial Team