The history of the Armenian people is inextricably linked not only with the Armenian Highlands, but also with the Mesopotamian lowland starting at its foot, as well as with the eastern regions of Turkey, once known as Western Armenia. Herodotus wrote about this country, but even before him, truly exciting events took place here.
Western Armenia: such a long story
The path of the national and state formation of the Armenian people is so long and difficult that it is rather difficult to determine the exact place of its origin, and there is still no consensus among scientists on this matter.
One thing is clear - if you mentally draw a line from the city of Samsun on the Black Sea coast of modern Turkey to another Turkish city of Mersin, which stands on the Mediterranean coast, then such a line on the one hand and the border of the modern Armenian Republic on the other will become the borders of the region, known in historiography as Western Armenia.
From the Iron Age to Tigranakert
Western Armenia has been inhabited by people since the time when mankind did not yet know the potter's wheel. Archaeological excavations started intwentieth century, show that highly organized human communities lived in the immediate vicinity of the Armenian Highlands in the 10th century. BC e.
Among Armenian historians, there has always been a tendency to trace the genealogy of the Armenian people to the state of Urartu, whose center was on the eastern shore of Lake Van. An extensive monograph by the great St. Petersburg researcher B. B. Piotrovsky is devoted to this issue.
After a short time, the once friendly Hittites came to replace the Kingdom of Van, then the Greeks and Romans, who were replaced by the Byzantines.
However, there was also a period of greatness and complete national independence, thanks to which Armenia took an important place on the world map. This was made possible thanks to one of the greatest sovereigns in the history of the country. During his reign, Western Armenia began to include part of the lands of the east of Anatolia. Glory to the Armenian people was brought by Tigran the Great, who conquered vast lands outside of his usual habitat. He also built the city of Tigranakert, whose black bas alt walls have survived to this day.
The Great Partition and Borders of Armenia
Being in the very center of Asia Minor, Armenia could not but become an arena of struggle between the greatest states of antiquity. In lV n. e. a war broke out between the Eastern Roman Empire and Sasanian Iran, as a result of which the western part of historical Armenia was ceded to Byzantium, and the eastern part began to belong to Persia.
For a long time, until the Turkic conquest, the Armenians occupied an important placein the administrative elite of Byzantium, and about thirty sovereigns out of fifty were Armenians.
The borders of Armenia during this period were brought into line with the administrative requirements of the empire, and the country was divided into many small regions, fem.
Armenian Genocide in Western Armenia
European politicians have raised the issue of the position of the Armenian minority in the Ottoman Empire since the XlX century. This was due to the desire of the last sultans to direct the aggression of the masses against the Armenians, instead of seriously taking up the modernization of the state system.
The first massacres of Armenians began in the last quarter of the nineteenth century and covered the entire territory of Western Armenia, where the Armenians at that time were the majority or had a significant representation. Most researchers are convinced that such massacres would not have been possible without the connivance of the Government of the Golden Port.
Feeling impunity and lack of European resistance, the Ottoman government continued its persecution of Armenians and mass persecution of other minorities such as Assyrians and Kurds. Two decades later, these persecutions would culminate in mass executions of Armenians under the control of government officials. In many countries, these events will be called genocide, with which modern Turkey categorically disagrees.
Woodrow Wilson and dreams of independence revival
After losing to the Ottomanempire in the First World War, an active division of the state that was disintegrating into parts began. With the support of British troops, many Arab countries, as well as the Slavic peoples of the Balkans, gained independence, and some parts of the Turkish state were occupied by the French and British.
At one of the peace conferences, American President Woodrow Wilson proposed the creation of an independent state of the Armenian people, who were supposed to withdraw land from the Syrian border to the Black Sea, along with the city of Trabzon on its coast. If this happened, Armenia would look different on the world map than it does now. In this case, the country would have access to the sea, which is now deprived.
However, all these plans were shattered by the might of the then-nascent Turkish Republic, and Western Armenia never gained independence.
