1.
Ottoman Bank
–
It operated as the Imperial Ottoman Bank from 1863 to 1924. Privileged as a bank, it carried out the functions of a central bank. In June 1996, the Ottoman Bank was sold to the Doguş Group, in 2001, the Ottoman Bank became part of the Garanti Bank. On February 4,1863, seven years after its establishment, sultan Abdülâziz, who expected to improve his countrys economy, which was in a state of financial crisis after the Crimean War, ratified the contract immediately. Tanzimat eras principal renovations in the field were the re-establishment of the currency. The Ottoman Bank provided the Treasury with the advances, played an intermediary role during the Ottoman public debt and acted as a bank of issue. On February 18,1875, the bank was authorized to control the budget, the character of the Ottoman Bank as a state bank was fully reaffirmed by extending its right of issue for 20 years and conferring on it the role of Treasurer of the Empire. Following the re-establishment of Empires credit standing, the placing of Turkish loans abroad became possible around 1886, the Banks financial support continued to some other railway projects including the line Constantinople-Salonica, Smyrna-Kasaba and the Baghdad Railway. In 1896, the Bank played a role in the establishment of the Ereğli coal mining company on the Black Sea shore. In August 1896, the bank was the subject of a seizure by Armenian Revolutionaries intent on bringing attention to mistreatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. But, with the exception of Cyprus, during time, the British and French executives of the bank left their posts. After the War of Independence and the proclamation of the Republic of Turkey, the name of the Bank was changed from the Imperial Ottoman Bank back to the Ottoman Bank. The Banks role as a state bank remained, however it was extended on a temporary due to the Turkish governments intention to establish its own Central Bank. During the period after World War I, most of the branches had to be closed, in 1933, the Ottoman Bank became a commercial bank, and finally in 1952 it turned into a private institution. Following the Suez Canal crisis in 1956, Egyptian government nationalized all the five branches in the country, the Egyptian government established Bank Al-Goumhourieh to take over the Egyptian operations of Ionian Bank and the Ottoman Bank in the wake of the Suez Canal War. In 1958, the Bank extended its network to East African countries such as Kenya, Uganda, the branches in France and Switzerland it regrouped in a separate company called Banque Ottomane, which Grindlays Bank later bought. In 1996, the Ottoman Bank was sold to Doğuş Group, on July 31,2001, it merged with Körfez Bankasi. On December 21,2001, it was incorporated in its principal shareholder and this led to the disappearance of the name Ottoman Bank from all remaining branches
2.
Constantinople
–
Constantinople was the capital city of the Roman/Byzantine Empire, and also of the brief Latin, and the later Ottoman empires. It was reinaugurated in 324 AD from ancient Byzantium as the new capital of the Roman Empire by Emperor Constantine the Great, after whom it was named, Constantinople was famed for its massive and complex defences. The first wall of the city was erected by Constantine I, Constantinople never truly recovered from the devastation of the Fourth Crusade and the decades of misrule by the Latins. The origins of the name of Byzantion, more known by the later Latin Byzantium, are not entirely clear. The founding myth of the city has it told that the settlement was named after the leader of the Megarian colonists, Byzas. The later Byzantines of Constantinople themselves would maintain that the city was named in honour of two men, Byzas and Antes, though this was likely just a play on the word Byzantion. During this time, the city was also called Second Rome, Eastern Rome, and Roma Constantinopolitana. As the city became the remaining capital of the Roman Empire after the fall of the West, and its wealth, population, and influence grew. In the language of other peoples, Constantinople was referred to just as reverently, the medieval Vikings, who had contacts with the empire through their expansion in eastern Europe used the Old Norse name Miklagarðr, and later Miklagard and Miklagarth. In Arabic, the city was sometimes called Rūmiyyat al-kubra and in Persian as Takht-e Rum, in East and South Slavic languages, including in medieval Russia, Constantinople was referred to as Tsargrad or Carigrad, City of the Caesar, from the Slavonic words tsar and grad. This was presumably a calque on a Greek phrase such as Βασιλέως Πόλις, the modern Turkish name for the city, İstanbul, derives from the Greek phrase eis tin polin, meaning into the city or to the city. In 1928, the Turkish alphabet was changed from Arabic script to Latin script, in time the city came to be known as Istanbul and its variations in most world languages. In Greece today, the city is still called Konstantinoúpolis/Konstantinoúpoli or simply just the City, apart from this, little is known about this initial settlement, except that it was abandoned by the time the Megarian colonists settled the site anew. A farsighted treaty with the emergent power of Rome in c.150 BC which stipulated tribute in exchange for independent status allowed it to enter Roman rule unscathed. The site lay astride the land route from Europe to Asia and the seaway from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean, and had in the Golden Horn an excellent and spacious harbour. He would later rebuild Byzantium towards the end of his reign, in which it would be briefly renamed Augusta Antonina, fortifying it with a new city wall in his name, Constantine had altogether more colourful plans. Rome was too far from the frontiers, and hence from the armies and the imperial courts, yet it had been the capital of the state for over a thousand years, and it might have seemed unthinkable to suggest that the capital be moved to a different location. Constantinople was built over 6 years, and consecrated on 11 May 330, Constantine divided the expanded city, like Rome, into 14 regions, and ornamented it with public works worthy of an imperial metropolis
3.
Ottoman Empire
–
After 1354, the Ottomans crossed into Europe, and with the conquest of the Balkans the Ottoman Beylik was transformed into a transcontinental empire. The Ottomans ended the Byzantine Empire with the 1453 conquest of Constantinople by Mehmed the Conqueror, at the beginning of the 17th century the empire contained 32 provinces and numerous vassal states. Some of these were later absorbed into the Ottoman Empire, while others were granted various types of autonomy during the course of centuries. With Constantinople as its capital and control of lands around the Mediterranean basin, while the empire was once thought to have entered a period of decline following the death of Suleiman the Magnificent, this view is no longer supported by the majority of academic historians. The empire continued to maintain a flexible and strong economy, society, however, during a long period of peace from 1740 to 1768, the Ottoman military system fell behind that of their European rivals, the Habsburg and Russian Empires. While the Empire was able to hold its own during the conflict, it was struggling with internal dissent. Starting before World War I, but growing increasingly common and violent during it, major atrocities were committed by the Ottoman government against the Armenians, Assyrians and Pontic Greeks. The word Ottoman is an anglicisation of the name of Osman I. Osmans name in turn was the Turkish form of the Arabic name ʿUthmān, in Ottoman Turkish, the empire was referred to as Devlet-i ʿAlīye-yi ʿOsmānīye, or alternatively ʿOsmānlı Devleti. In Modern Turkish, it is known as Osmanlı İmparatorluğu or Osmanlı Devleti, the Turkish word for Ottoman originally referred to the tribal followers of Osman in the fourteenth century, and subsequently came to be used to refer to the empires military-administrative elite. In contrast, the term Turk was used to refer to the Anatolian peasant and tribal population, the term Rūmī was also used to refer to Turkish-speakers by the other Muslim peoples of the empire and beyond. In Western Europe, the two names Ottoman Empire and Turkey were often used interchangeably, with Turkey being increasingly favored both in formal and informal situations and this dichotomy was officially ended in 1920–23, when the newly established Ankara-based Turkish government chose Turkey as the sole official name. Most scholarly historians avoid the terms Turkey, Turks, and Turkish when referring to the Ottomans, as the power of the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum declined in the 13th century, Anatolia was divided into a patchwork of independent Turkish principalities known as the Anatolian Beyliks. One of these beyliks, in the region of Bithynia on the frontier of the Byzantine Empire, was led by the Turkish tribal leader Osman, osmans early followers consisted both of Turkish tribal groups and Byzantine renegades, many but not all converts to Islam. Osman extended the control of his principality by conquering Byzantine towns along the Sakarya River and it is not well understood how the early Ottomans came to dominate their neighbours, due to the scarcity of the sources which survive from this period. One school of thought which was popular during the twentieth century argued that the Ottomans achieved success by rallying religious warriors to fight for them in the name of Islam, in the century after the death of Osman I, Ottoman rule began to extend over Anatolia and the Balkans. Osmans son, Orhan, captured the northwestern Anatolian city of Bursa in 1326 and this conquest meant the loss of Byzantine control over northwestern Anatolia. The important city of Thessaloniki was captured from the Venetians in 1387, the Ottoman victory at Kosovo in 1389 effectively marked the end of Serbian power in the region, paving the way for Ottoman expansion into Europe
4.
Armenian Revolutionary Federation
–
The ARF has traditionally advocated democratic socialism and is a full member of the Socialist International since 2003, which it had originally joined in 1907. It has the largest membership of the parties present in the Armenian diaspora. The party campaigns for the recognition of the Armenian Genocide and the right to reparations and it also advocates the establishment of United Armenia, partially based on the Treaty of Sèvres of 1920. ARF members formed fedayi groups that defended Armenian civilians through armed resistance, in 1918, the party was instrumental in the creation of the First Republic of Armenia, which fell to the Soviet communists in 1920. After its leadership was exiled by the communists, the ARF established itself within Armenian diaspora communities, after the fall of the USSR, it returned to Armenia, where it now again has a presence as a minor party in Armenias parliament. In the late 19th century, Eastern Europe and Russia became the hub of small groups advocating reform in Armenian-populated areas in the Ottoman Empire, the Social Democrat Hunchakian Party at one point had agreed to join as well, seeing that the ARFs political ideology was socialism. However, the Hunchakians claimed the new party was not Marxist enough, the original aim of the ARF was to gain autonomy for the Armenian-populated areas in the Ottoman Empire. The party began to organize itself in the Ottoman Empire in the early 1890s and held its first major meeting in Tiflis, Russian Empire, in 1892. The party set its goal of a society based on the principles of freedom of assembly, freedom of speech, freedom of religion. The ARF gradually acquired significant strength and sympathy among Russian Armenians, mainly because of the ARFs stance towards the Ottoman Empire, the party enjoyed the support of the central Russian administration, as tsarist and ARF foreign policy had the same alignment until 1903. On June 12,1903, the tsarist authorities passed an edict to bring all Armenian Church property under imperial control and this was faced by strong ARF opposition, because the ARF perceived the tsarist edict as a threat to the Armenian national existence. As a result, the ARF leadership decided to defend Armenian churches by dispatching militiamen who acted as guards, in 1905–06, the Armenian-Tatar massacres broke out during which the ARF became involved in armed activities. Some sources claim that the Russian government incited the massacres in order to reinforce its authority during the turmoil of 1905. The first outbreak of violence occurred in Baku, in February 1905, the ARF held the Russian authorities responsible for inaction and instigation of massacres that were part of a larger anti-Armenian policy. Unable to rely on government forces to protect their interests and properties, the Russian Tsars envoy in the Caucasus, Vorontsov-Dashkov, reported that the ARF bore a major portion of responsibilities for perpetrating the massacres. The ARF, however, argued that it helped to organize the defence of the Armenian population against Muslim attacks, the blows suffered at the hands of the Dashnakist fighting squads proved a catalyst for the consolidation of the Muslim community of the Caucasus. During that period, the ARF regarded armed activity, including terror, in January 1912,159 ARF members, being lawyers, bankers, merchants and other intellectuals, were tried before the Russian senate for their participation in the party. Kerensky succeeded in having the evidence reexamined for one of the defendants, the Senate eventually opened an inquiry against the chief magistrate who had brought the charges against the Dashnak members and concluded that he was insane
5.
Papken Siuni
–
Bedros Parian was born in 1873 in the village of Akn, the same village Siamanto was from. Early in his life, he moved to Constantinople where he continued his studies, in Constantinople, he became interested in revolutionary ideologies. He joined a Naval institute where he found other sympathetic youth and formed with them Syunik and they eventually merged with the Armenian Revolutionary Federation. Upon merging with the ARF, he known for his ability to gather intelligence without being suspected. On his intelligence missions, he would wear a fez and peasant clothes to remain unnoticed from the Ottoman secret police and he became a fundamental aspect of the national movement. During the Hamidian massacres, Bedros Parian lost his parents which would make him pursue the national movement even more staunchly, the Ottoman Bank takeover was his brainchild, which he came up with after the murder of his parents. The ARF made Papken Siuni the leader and mastermind of the operation and he would secure pistols, grenades and other weapons which he would personally give to his comrades who were to be involved in the operation. The night before the takeover, he gave his men a speech stating in Armenian about the Armenian cause. On 26 August 1896, Papken Siuni, alongside Karekin Pastermadjian, Papken Siuni was part of the first wave of attackers. But before he could go into the bank, a bullet pierced through one of the grenades attached to his chest. Despite his short tenure in the takeover, he is credited as playing a big part in the takeover. ARF Lebanon page From the Armenian, Mihran Kurdoghlian, Badmoutioun Hayots, C. hador, Athens, Greece,1996, pg.44
6.
Armen Garo
–
Garegin or Karekin Pastermadjian, better known by his nom de guerre Armen Garo or Armen Karo was an Armenian nationalist activist and politician. A was a member of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation for more than two decades. Between 1918 and 1920 he served as the first ambassador to the United States from the First Republic of Armenia, Karekin Pastermadjian was born in Karin. He finished his education as one of the first graduates of the Sanasarian College of Erzerum in 1891. Later in 1894, he continued his studies in France to study agriculture at the Agricultural School of Nancy-Université, during this period he was introduced to Armenian Revolutionary Federation and become younger generation of Armenian students of ARF in Europe. His plans to return to his hometown after graduating came to a halt when massacres and he left his studies to aid his compatriots in Zeitun. He soon found himself in Geneva, where he became an activist alongside his friends and he was sent to Egypt to assist the Zeitun Resistance. With Sarkis Srentz, Haig Tiriakian, Max Zevrouz, he left Egypt and it was around this time that Karekin Pastermadjian first assumed the name Armen Garo. The 1896 Ottoman Bank Takeover, executed on 26 August 1896, was his, the attack took place at about 1 p. m. Armen Garo entered 10 minutes prior to the attack. He was to keep the busy and the bank officers from escaping. His men didnt arrive quickly so he went to a shop across the street. When he saw the men through the doorway, he ran out to meet them, during the long and bloody battle, the group leader, Papken Siuni, was killed. Armen Garo took over as leader, ordering his group for much of the standoff, after these events, Karekin Pastermadjian returned to Europe to continue his unfinished studies. French Foreign Minister Gabriel Hanotaux declared the Armenians who had connected with the Ottoman Bank Takeover as persona non grata. Armen Garo transferred to Switzerland and studied natural sciences at the University of Geneva, during his studies, he continued his activities with the Armenian Revolutionary Federation. He was on the roster of the second ARF general conference in 1898. Despite his youth, he had gained trust and authority in the circles of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation. In 1900 he completed his courses at the University of Geneva, in 1901 he founded a lab in Tiflis for chemical research
7.
Turkish language
–
Outside of Turkey, significant smaller groups of speakers exist in Germany, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Northern Cyprus, Greece, the Caucasus, and other parts of Europe and Central Asia. Cyprus has requested that the European Union add Turkish as an official EU language, in 1928, as one of Atatürks Reforms in the early years of the Republic of Turkey, the Ottoman Turkish alphabet was replaced with a Latin alphabet. The distinctive characteristics of Turkish are vowel harmony and extensive agglutination, the basic word order of Turkish is subject–object–verb. Turkish has no classes or grammatical gender. Turkish has a strong T–V distinction and usage of honorifics, Turkish uses second-person pronouns that distinguish varying levels of politeness, social distance, age, courtesy or familiarity toward the addressee. The plural second-person pronoun and verb forms are used referring to a person out of respect. Turkic languages belong to the Altaic language group, the Turkic family comprises some 30 living languages spoken across Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and Siberia. Turkish is a member of the Oghuz group of languages, a subgroup of the Turkic language family, there is a high degree of mutual intelligibility between Turkish and the other Oghuz Turkic languages, including Azerbaijani, Turkmen, Qashqai, Gagauz, and Balkan Gagauz Turkish. The earliest known Old Turkic inscriptions are the three monumental Orkhon inscriptions found in modern Mongolia, erected in honour of the prince Kul Tigin and his brother Emperor Bilge Khagan, these date back to the second Turk Kaghanate. The Seljuqs of the Oghuz Turks, in particular, brought their language, following the adoption of Islam c. Turkish literature during the Ottoman period, particularly Divan poetry, was influenced by Persian, including the adoption of poetic meters. One of the tasks of the newly established association was to initiate a reform to replace loanwords of Arabic. By banning the usage of imported words in the press, the association succeeded in removing several hundred words from the language. While most of the words introduced to the language by the TDK were newly derived from Turkic roots, owing to this sudden change in the language, older and younger people in Turkey started to differ in their vocabularies. While the generations born before the 1940s tend to use the terms of Arabic or Persian origin. The past few decades have seen the work of the TDK to coin new Turkish words to express new concepts and technologies as they enter the language. Many of these new words, particularly information technology terms, have received widespread acceptance, however, the TDK is occasionally criticized for coining words which sound contrived and artificial. Some earlier changes—such as bölem to replace fırka, political party—also failed to meet with popular approval, some words restored from Old Turkic have taken on specialized meanings, for example betik is now used to mean script in computer science
8.
Armenian language
–
The Armenian language is an Indo-European language spoken by the Armenians. Like Hellenic Greek, it has its own branch in the language tree. It is the language of Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh Republic. It has historically been spoken throughout the Armenian Highlands and today is spoken in the Armenian diaspora. Armenian has its own script, the Armenian alphabet, introduced in 405 AD by Mesrop Mashtots. Armenian is an independent branch of the Indo-European languages and it is of interest to linguists for its distinctive phonological developments within that family. Armenian exhibits more satemization than centumization, although it is not classified as belonging to either of these subgroups, Armenia was a monolingual country by the 2nd century BC at the latest. Its language has a literary history, with a 5th-century Bible translation as its oldest surviving text. Its vocabulary has been influenced by Western Middle Iranian languages, particularly Parthian, and to an extent by Greek, Persian. There are two standardized modern literary forms, Eastern Armenian and Western Armenian, with which most contemporary dialects are mutually intelligible and he is also credited by some with the creation of the Caucasian Albanian alphabet. In The Anabasis, Xenophon describes many aspects of Armenian village life and he relates that the Armenian people spoke a language that to his ear sounded like the language of the Persians. W. M. However, unlike shared innovations, the retention of archaisms is not considered conclusive evidence of a period of common isolated development. Some of the terms he gives admittedly have an Akkadian or Sumerian provenance, loan words from Iranian languages, along with the other ancient accounts such as that of Xenophon above, initially led linguists to erroneously classify Armenian as an Iranian language. Scholars such as Paul de Lagarde and F. Müller believed that the similarities between the two meant that Iranian and Armenian were the same language. The distinctness of Armenian was recognized when philologist Heinrich Hübschmann used the method to distinguish two layers of Iranian loans from the older Armenian vocabulary. Meillets hypothesis became popular in the wake of his Esquisse, eric P. Hamp supports the Graeco-Armenian thesis, anticipating even a time when we should speak of Helleno-Armenian. Nevertheless, as Fortson comments, by the time we reach our earliest Armenian records in the 5th century AD, graeco--Aryan is a hypothetical clade within the Indo-European family, ancestral to the Greek language, the Armenian language, and the Indo-Iranian languages. Graeco-Aryan unity would have divided into Proto-Greek and Proto-Indo-Iranian by the mid-third millennium BC
9.
Hamidian massacres
–
The massacres are named after Sultan Abdul Hamid II, who, in his efforts to reinforce the territorial integrity of the embattled Ottoman Empire, reasserted Pan-Islamism as a state ideology. The massacres began with incidents in the Ottoman interior in 1894, gained full force in 1894–96, although the Ottomans had previously suppressed other revolts, the harshest measures were directed against the Armenian community. They observed no distinction between ages or genders, and massacred them with brutal force and this occurred at a time when the telegraph could spread news around the world, and the massacres received extensive coverage in the media of Western Europe and the United States. The origins of the hostility toward Armenians lay in the precarious position in which the Ottoman Empire found itself in the last quarter of the 19th century. The loss of Ottoman dominion over the Balkans was ushered in by an era of European nationalism, the Armenians of the empire, who were long considered second-class citizens, had begun in the mid-1860s and early 1870s to ask for civil reforms and better treatment from their government. These requests went unheeded by the central government, the Armenians sent a delegation led by Mkrtich Khrimian to the 1878 Congress of Berlin to lobby the European powers to include proper safeguards for their kinsmen in the eventual peace agreement. The Sultan, however, was not prepared to relinquish any power, Abdul Hamid believed that the woes of the Ottoman Empire stemmed from the endless persecutions and hostilities of the Christian world. He perceived the Ottoman Armenians to be an extension of foreign hostility, Turkish historian and Abdul Hamids biographer Osman Nuri observed, The mere mention of the word reform irritated him, inciting his criminal instincts. Upon hearing of the Armenian delegations visit to Berlin in 1878, he remarked, Such great impudence. Such great treachery toward religion. The provisions for reforms in the Armenian provinces embodied in Article 61 of the Treaty of Berlin were ultimately not enforced and were followed instead by further repression. On January 2,1881, collective notes sent by the European powers reminding the Sultan of the promises of reform failed to prod him into action, the eastern provinces of the Ottoman Empire were historically insecure, the Kurdish rebels attacked the inhabitants of towns and villages with impunity. In 1890-91, at a time when the empire was too weak and disorganized or reluctant to halt them. Made up mainly of Kurdish tribes, but also of Turks, Yöruk, Arabs, Turkmens and Circassians, in the face of such abuses and violence, the Armenians established revolutionary organizations, namely the Social Democrat Hunchakian Party and the Armenian Revolutionary Federation. Clashes ensued and unrest occurred in 1892 at Merzifon and in 1893 at Tokat, in 1894, the Sultan began to target the Armenian people in a precursor to the Hamidian massacres. This persecution strengthened nationalistic sentiment among Armenians, the first notable battle in the Armenian resistance took place in Sasun. Hunchak activists, such as Mihran Damadian, Hampartsoum Boyadjian, and Hrayr, encouraged resistance against double taxation, the ARF armed the people of the region. The Armenians confronted the Ottoman army and Kurdish irregulars at Sasun, finally succumbing to superior numbers, in response to the resistance at Sasun, the governor of Mush responded by inciting the local Muslims against the Armenians. Sultan Abdul Hamid sent the Ottoman army into the area and also armed groups of Kurdish irregulars, the violence spread and affected most of the Armenian towns in the Ottoman Empire
10.
Abdul Hamid II
–
Abdul Hamid II was the 34th Sultan of the Ottoman Empire and the last Sultan to exert effective autocratic control over the fracturing state. Abdul Hamids 1909 removal from the throne was hailed by most Ottoman citizens, the most far-reaching of these reforms were in education, professional schools were established. The University of Istanbul, although shut down by Abdul Hamid himself in 1881, was reopened in 1900, and a network of secondary, primary, Railway and telegraph systems were developed by primarily German firms. Between 1871 and 1908, the Sublime Porte thus reached a new degree of organizational elaboration and articulation. Abroad, Abdul Hamid was nicknamed the Red Sultan or Abdul the Damned due to the massacres committed against minorities during his rule and use of a police to silence dissent. These led to an attempt in 1905, contributing to the sultans worsening paranoia until his eventual removal from the throne. Abdul Hamid II was born at the Topkapı Palace in Istanbul and he was the son of Sultan Abdülmecid and Tirimüjgan Kadınefendi, originally named Virjin. After the death of his mother, he became the adoptive son of his fathers wife. He was a carpenter and personally crafted some high quality furniture. Abdul Hamid II was also interested in opera and personally wrote the first-ever Turkish translations of many opera classics and he ascended to the throne following the deposition of his brother Murad on 31 August 1876. At his accession, some commentators were impressed by the fact that he rode practically unattended to the Eyüp Sultan Mosque where he was given the Sword of Osman. Most people expected Abdul Hamid II to have ideas. In any event, like many other reforms of the Ottoman Empire change proved to be nearly impossible. Russia continued to mobilize for war, however, everything changed when the British fleet approached the capital from the Sea of Marmara. Early in 1877 the Ottoman Empire went to war with the Russian Empire, Abdul Hamids biggest fear, near dissolution, was realised with the Russian declaration of war on 24 April 1877. In that conflict, the Ottoman Empire fought without help from European allies, Russian chancellor Prince Gorchakov had effectively purchased Austrian neutrality with the Reichstadt Agreement. The Russian victory was quickly realised, the conflict ended in February 1878. After the war with Russia, Abdulhamid suspended the constitution in February 1878, for the next three decades, the Ottoman Empire was ruled by Abdulhamid from Yıldız Palace
Ottoman Empire
Armenian Revolutionary Federation
