The peninsula of the Peloponnese (in southern Greece), which is also known as the Morea, was first partly conquered in 1397 CE by die Ottoman Sultan Beyazit I from the Byzantines, and was completely overrun in 1460 by Sultan Mehmet II, who was received as a deliverer by the Greek Orthodox Christian population, then suffering under the rule of the Roman Catholics. In 1698 the Ottomans were complled to cede the Peloponnese to the Venetians, under die Treaty of Carlowitz, but in 1718 it was retroceded to the Ottoman Empire under the Treaty of Passarowitz.

The sandjak Prevesa has witnessed some of the most characteristical developments of the Tanzimat period. It had remained outside of the boundaries of the Hellenic kingdom as it was established in 1829, but still it was the closest contact point of the Ottoman empire with Greece both from commercial and geographical aspects.

The Muslim World witnessed the appearance of several intellectual and religious movements emanated from different Islamic territories in the 18th and 19th centuries. A number of social, political and religious causes motivated the occurrence of these multifaceted movements. Decline of the Ottoman Empire and diminishing authority of the Caliph, growing political and cultural influence of Western powers throughout the Muslim World, moral laxity and supersitious accretions prevalent among believers for long, rising wave of nationalist trends to establish regional and nation-states, all of these aforementioned factors and some others inspired new ideas and orientations that occurred in the Muslim World. Among them the Wahhâbiya is of considerable importance as it has long-lasting influence on the other revivalist and puritanist movements.

When Sir Horace Rumbold, the British Minister in Switzerland, succeeded Admiral Sir John de Robeck, on 17 November 1920, as High Commissioner in Istanbul, the Ottoman Empire, a member of the Central Powers, was already defeated by the Entente Powers (the Allies) in the disastrous Great War, and was forced to sign the Armistice of Mondros (Mudros) on 30 October 1918.

In this paper I intend to trace cursorily the background of the incidents that took place in the Ottoman Empire, mainly in 1915, that caused a great tragedy to the people of Anatolia, especially to the Turks, other Muslims, and Armenians. I also intınd to examine that tragedy, its instigators, causes, effects, and how it was exploited by Britain's wartime propagandists, in the light of new documents that have come to my notice during recent studies. I hope that my conclusions may contribute to a better understanding of the Turco-Armenian relations, and of how those amicable relations were disrupted and exploited by external and extremist forces immediately before and during the fateful years of the First World War.

It would be proper and much enlightening to look for the reasons why and how the Ottoman Empire could perpetuate a brillant existence on three continents, Asia, Europe and Africa, in the Akhi Order or Fraternity. In other words, Akhi faith and principles should be counted amongst a myriads of factors that contributed into six centuries of Ottoman domination on these three continents.

Significant socio-political and economic events in the lives of nations and groups occur within the framework of historical and geographical determinants at work, together with the systemic and subsystemic factors that impinge upon them. Often, the domestic linkage of foreign policy and the impact of foreign policy on domestic politics are too closely intertwined and, therefore, can not be sharply and clearly delineated. The geographic locations and the historical experiences of nations mold into forms, norms, and traditions, producing national cultures. Expansion of a culture or its collaboration with other cultures produce similar or synthetic patterns of life, frame of mind, and a general in the formation of events.

During the first part of the fifteenth century Jews were subjected to systematic persecution in Bohemia, Austria, and Poland; but it was their oppression in Portugal and Spain, where some of them had submitted, under pain of death, to enforced Christianization, culminating, in 1492, in their expulsion, that gave the greatest impetus to their mass exodus. The Catholic kings, at the end of their reconquista of Spain, had not only cracked down radically on the Moriscoes (Moors), and on all the other Muslims of the Iberian peninsula, they had also envisaged a final solution for their Jewish subjects.

Although the term Ottoman Archives should in fact include any archive that once fell within the boundaries of the Ottoman Empire, it only reminds us of the Başbakanlık (Primeministerial) Archives and that of Topkapı Palace in Istanbul. Furthermore the Ottoman archival material whether found in the National Archive of Cairo or in Ragusa Archive of Yoguslavia are of no lesser importance than those found in Başbakanlık Archive although not as abundant. The scholars of the Balkan states such as Albania, Bosnia, Bulgaria and Hungary have not only taken interest in the Ottoman archives in their own countries, but also in the Primeministerial Archive of Istanbul, and have studied and published many documents -especially the ones pertaining to their own countries- from these archives. Unfortunately the Turks and the Arabs have only recently started taking interest in these archives and particularly the Arab scholars in this field are very scant. There is no doubt that these archives are not only important for the Muslim countries but also for the world history. The report prepared by Unesco in 1982 makes this point very clear.

Following the establishment of regular diplomatic relations between the Ottoman Empire and foreign states in the sixteenth century, the Ottomans began to face what came to be known as the protégé system, which later proved to be the most dangerous threat to the very existence of their empire. This was the notion of foreign protection for the non-Muslim subjects of the Ottoman Empire.