THE SICK MAN OF EUROPE 135Simultaneously, Western ideas of democracy and government had been
spreading into the minority Christian populations of the Empire. Western
Christian missionaries, both Catholic and Protestant, had been moving
into the Ottoman Empire since 1820. By the beginning of the war with
Russia, thousands of them were present. When their efforts to convert
Muslims failed, they directed their attention to the Christian communities
within the Ottoman Empire, including the Gregorian Armenians. This
outside religious influence posed a grave threat to the authority and vested
interests of the Gregorian patriarchate. The Gregorian patriarch, in order
to strike terror in the hearts of his adherents, restored summary excom-
munication of Armenians who associated with the missionaries. Those
excommunicated turned to their newfound benefactors, and a splinter Ar-
menian community was soon born. Until the end of the Empire, its foreign
friends would closely watch this Georgian Protestant minority.
In 1878 the Armenian Question came out in the Congress of Berlin and
the disposition of Armenia became a concern of the European powers.
The Treaty of Berlin, signed on July 13, 1878, proved a disappointment
for the Armenians. It provided for the immediate withdrawal of Russian
troops from eastern Turkey, which the British had demanded. Although
the powers did not reject the issue of relief for the beleaguered Armenians,
they successively altered and diluted the stringent provisions of the San
Stefano agreement. The latter article obliged the Sublime Porte to pursue
reforms and security for its Christian subjects in Turkish Armenia under
the supervision of the Great Powers. Sadly, the nature of this supervision
remained undefined, and allowed discretion on the part of the Ottomans.
The new treaty also failed to set up any sort of administrative machinery
for such supervision. As a result, the Sublime Porte, with a history of
lethargy and disinterest toward the plight of the Armenians, stood free to
neglect its eastern provinces as it saw fit.
The Ottoman government, however, became suspicious of subversion
among its Armenian subjects. This provoked Abdul Hamid’s notorious
internal security agency, the secretHafieh,to initiate a campaign of sudden
searches and seizures in Armenian churches, schools, and homes in Istan-
bul and in the provinces. Although this measure failed to reveal any in-
dications of revolutionary activity among the Armenians, tensions grew
between the Ottoman government and the Armenian population. For rea-
sons unknown, in 1895, 300,000 Armenians were reportedly massacred.
Despite that, in 1909, when the Young Turks took over the government
of the Ottoman Empire with a reform agenda, the Armenian population
supported them.
The outbreak of World War I would prove a disaster for Turko-
Armenian relations. To support the war effort, on August 22, 1914, the