May 28, 1918 born during the Great War (World War 1)

 Vaհe H Apelian

Tomorrow is May 28. It is a public holiday in Armenia, one of the 13 non-working holidays. It is called Republic Day and is celebrated to observe the founding of the first Republic of Amenia on May 28, 1918, after being stateless for the previous 543 years, since the fall of the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia in 1375.

The Armenian Republic was born in war time. It was born as the Great War or World War I was raging. The war had started on July 28, 1914 and ended on the 11th hour on November 11, 1918.

It is called World War, because the conflict was between major global coalitions. The Allied Powers, consisted of France, Great Britain, and Russia, warring the Central Powers consisting of Germany and Austria-Hungary of the day, allied with the Ottoman Empire (Turkey). The Americans joined the Allied forces in 1917, to help them reverse the losing tide.

The Armenians participated in the World War I, siding  with the Allied Forces and fought both on the Western and Eastern or Caucasian fronts to help the Allied forces defeat Turkey and to have the Armenians establish a state of our own.

On the Eastern Front or Caucasian Front, the  Armenians fought under the Imperial Russian command, until the abdication of Tsar Nicholas in March 1917. Several months later, in October 1917, the Bolsheviks, led by Lenin, took over the Russian government. The immediate goal of the Bolsheviks was to exit from the devastating war. In December 1917, the Bolsheviks formally ended Russia's participation in the war by signing the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in March 1918. 

The tsar's abdication and Bolshevik Russia’s exit from the Eastern Front of the Great War became catastrophic to the Armenians. It gave the Turks a free rein to commit the Armenian Genocide and to cleanse the surviving Armenians from the Armenian highlands, forcing the rag tag survivors of the Armenian genocide flee to Eastern Armenia.

But as Russia withdrew in 1917, Armenian battle hardened volunteer combatants, filled the void and halted further Ottoman advances in 1918 at the decisive Battles of Sardarabad, Bash Abaran, and Karakilisa, paving the way for the Armenians to establish the first Republic of Armenia on May 28, 1918. 

. A week after the founding the Republic of Armenia, the Ottoman Empire and the newly independent First Republic of Armenia, signed the Treaty of Batumi on June 4, 1918. Turkey recognized Armenia's independence but the treaty forced Armenia to cede large territories and submit to a significantly reduced military and restricted sovereignty.

The Great War continued on the Western Front. The Americans joined the allies in 1917 and on May 28, 1918, U.S. forces fought its first major offensive in the Battle of Cantigny, in France.

Armenian Americans served directly in the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) in Europe. Among them notable were Brigadier General Haig Shekerjian, who later became the first general of Armenian descent in the U.S. military, and Major Varaztad Kazanjian, who pioneered reconstructive plastic surgery during the war, and became known as the Miracle Man of the Western Front. 

Armenians from the U.S. also served in The French Foreign Legion. The  French called the formation La Legion Armenienne. These volunteer Armnenian combatants came to be known as Gamavors, the Armenian name for volunteers. The Gamavors fought crucial battles in the Middle  East and helped secure Allied victories in the region, notably the Battle of Arara on September 18, 1918.

The Armenian volunteer combatants, especially on the Western Front of the Great War, were motivated by a French and Diaspora Armenian pact which promised that in return for Armenian military support to the Allied Forces,  against the Ottoman and German alliance, the French and their allies would help the Western Armenians lay the foundation for home rule in Cilicia. But that was not to be.

The First World War ended in  Paris Peace Conference (1919–1920) to establish the formal peace terms and redraw the global map following World War I. Diplomats from victorious Allied nations gathered in France to penalize the defeated Central Powers, establish new national borders, and create the League of Nations to prevent future conflicts. 

The Armenians were also invited to the conference. The conference came with the Treaty of Versailles, that severely punished Germany, and had a portion of Turkey under the mandate of the United State 

Treaty of Versailles, required Germany to accept responsibility for the war, relinquish territory, drastically reduce its military, and pay heavy financial reparations, that crippled the post war German economy and rendered the Germans destitute and gave rise to the Nazis, two decades later.

The victorious powers however were much more lenient to Turkey, although it was complicit with Germany. The Treaty of Sèvres promised Armenians an independent state encompassing vast historic territories on the historic Armenian highlands, recognized the Republic of Armenia and held Turkey accountable for the Armenian genocide. However, the treaty was never ratified.  On the contrary, it was superseded by the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, which cemented modern Turkish borders and for all practical purposes legitimized the Great Armenian Dispossession because of the Genocide. 

From our tumultuous history, there remains of course the Republic of Armenia and us, as the descendents of the Armenian Genocide survivors turned into a global nation. Tomorrow, the citizens of Armenia will take a day off to attend the festivities marking the 108th anniversary of the founding of the first Republic of Armenia. The rest of us will join them in one way or another.