ArmeniaWhile...

Sivasback Saturday this week marks the 100th anniversary of when the United States didn't occupy Turkey.

William Morris for George Matthew Adams Service, ca. Oct./Nov., 1918

The chief Entente forces battling the Ottoman Empire in World War I were Russia and Great Britain; but since the Bolsheviks took over Russia and pulled out of the war a year before Armistice Day, it was the British and their ANZAC forces who defeated the Turkish army.

"While the Going's Good" by Clifford Berryman in Washington (D.C.) Everning Star, October 10, 1918

When the war was over and the allies divvied up the spoils, the British took Ottoman territories in Palestine and the Arabian Gulf (and see how smoothly that worked out?), and the French claimed Syria and Lebanon. Had Russia seen the war through to the end, Armenia and other portions of modern-day Turkey would probably have fallen to St. Petersburg. But since Russia had bugged out early — and given the major powers' fear of the spread of communism — British Prime Minister David Lloyd George proposed that Turkey be made a "mandate territory" of the United States.

"This Old Bird..." by Fred Morgan in Philadelphia Inquirer, February 1, 1919

In mandate territories, as created under the Article 22 of the League of Nations' Covenant, governing power was transferred from whatever their Central Power ruler had been to one of the victorious Entente nations. The theory was that their peoples weren't able to rule themselves just then, but would be guided by their mandatory power toward self-rule in the future — as distinct from colonies, to which there was no promise of future independence.

"Uncle Sam, Please Take the Lady Under Your Protection" by Johan Braakensiek in De Amsterdamer, probably in late 1919

The League had no authority to assign any mandate to a non-member country such as the United States. Lloyd George argued, however, that somebody would have to take care of the place, and preferably not the Sultan.

A map of Armenia in the May 8-15, 1920 edition of The Independent surely stretches things a bit.

A major sore point of the Turkish question was the status of Armenia. The 12th of Wilson's 14 Points suggested that Armenia and other ethnic minorities of the Ottoman Empire might someday gain independence:

"The Turkish portion of the present Ottoman Empire should be assured a secure sovereignty, but the other nationalities which are now under Turkish rule should be assured an undoubted security of life and an absolutely unmolested opportunity of autonomous development..."

"Prohibition's Greatest Martyr" by Leo Thiele in Sioux City Tribune, ca. July, 1919

The Armenian genocide was well known outside the Ottoman Empire, although the word "genocide" wouldn't be coined until 1943. The Ottoman government had long viewed its second-class Christian citizens as a fifth column responsible, if only by their mere existence offending Allah, for the country's losses in war dating back to the 19th Century.

"Crated in Constantinople" by Ralph O. Yardley in San Francisco Chronicle, June/July, 1920

"He'll Be Leaving As Soon As That Fuse Burns" by Hubert Harper in Birmingham Age-Herald, by May 9, 1920

After a disastrous defeat in battle by Russia in Russian Armenia early in World War I, the Ottoman government's tacit approval of massacres of Armenians escalated into an active, official policy of arrests, deportations, death marches, and executions. Depending whom you believe, 600,000 to 1.5 million Armenians were slaughtered between 1914 and 1918.

"Armenia" by John McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune, April 28, 1920

As horrified as American and European governments (including Germany and Austria-Hungary) were by the Armenian genocide, and fully aware that it would continue as soon as Turkey was left to its own devices, none of the Entente victors were keen to remain involved in the Caucasus.

"Armenia, the Wall Flower," by Johan Braakensiek (?) in De Amsterdamer, ca. early 1920

After all, unlike the British and French mandate territories, Armenia had no oil, no Mediterranean vacation spots, and no sites precious to Western Christianity. The strongest argument to be made was that somebody had to keep Bolshevism from spreading southward.

"The Armenian Mandate" by John McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune, May 29, 1920

So on May 24, 1920, President Woodrow Wilson asked Congress for the authority to administer the
 Armenian mandate. Given the Chicago Tribune's stiff isolationist stance, John McCutcheon's cartoon seems surprisingly open to the idea.

"Who! Me?" by Albert T. Reid in The National Republican, May, 1920

"Can He Give It a Home?" by Wm. C. Morris for George Matthew Adams Service, June, 1920

The cartoons here by Albert Reid and William Morris were more typical of U.S. Republican-affiliated cartoonists and columnists.

"Go Away" by Rollin Kirby in New York World, June, 1920

Between isolationist Republicans and anti-imperialist Bryanist Democrats, Americans were increasingly disinterested in foreign entanglements. To nobody's surprise, the G.O.P. majority in the Senate rejected Wilson's request on June 1, 1920, joined by thirteen Democrats.