A Russo-Ottoman War in the Mid-1890s

CaliGuy

Banned
No idea. The threat was greatly exaggerated in the eyes of the Tsarist government, but there were some Armenians, in revolutionary organizations of both the all-Russian and the Armenian-specific kind.

OK.

Some of the Kurdish separatists desired an independent Kurdistan under Russian influence; but while that's not a completely impossible outcome, the Russians themselves did not have a clear end game in mind. They were helping the Kurds under the general assumption that it could prove useful later - if eastern Anatolia becomes a battleground for influence between various Great Powers, or as a possible counterweight to Armenian nationalism.

OK; understood.
 

CaliGuy

Banned
Also, though, one more question--if the Kurds were also potentially loyal to Russia, why exactly didn't the Ottoman Turks deport and conduct a genocide against them during WWI like they did with the Armenians?
 
Also, though, one more question--if the Kurds were also potentially loyal to Russia, why exactly didn't the Ottoman Turks deport and conduct a genocide against them during WWI like they did with the Armenians?

The Ottomans did plan to deport the Kurdish population into other areas of the Empire - and partially carried it out, deporting around 500,000 Kurds.

As for why these plans were only partially carried out, and why the Kurds were deported in harsh conditions but not murdered en masse like the Armenians, there are several reasons:
-The Kurds were better armed and more numerous. While the Armenians couldn't accomplish more than a few desperate last stands, the Kurds - if attacked as a whole - had the ability to launch a real and massive uprising and make it hurt.
-More than a few Kurds fought in the Ottoman army - another reason to avoid alienating them in the middle of war.
-The CUP was still halfway between the old Ottoman and new Turkish-nationalist ideologies. And while the old Ottoman system was OK with extreme violence against rebellious or potentially disloyal non-Muslim communities - it maintained that all Muslims were one nation, and singling out the Kurds for such measures would have felt wrong.
 
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