REGULATIONS FOR MUSLIM PEOPLE

During the 1905 revolution, Kars sent a deputy, Zekeriya Acarsky, to the Russian Parliament. At that time a serious enlightenment was taking place in the region through the organized activities of the Azeri population. The pioneers were intellectuals such as Ali Merdan Topcubasiyev, Ahmet Agayev (Agaoglu), Huseyinzade Ali Genceli and the journalist Suret Celilov. Opposition to Tsarism found a base in the society.

As part of these activities, a “congress of intellectuals was held. The ‘Muslim People Regulations’ were accepted unanimously and Zekariya Acarsky read this text out in the Russian parliament. Under these regulations, Muslim people who had previously been treated as slaves gained the same status as Christians. But this did not last long.

Russia was heavily defeated in the warwith Japan, and the Tsar forced the government to take extreme measures. First the labour resistance at the Lena copper mines was broken. Workers demonstrating in St. Petersburg were fired at and thousands of people died. Dozens of members of the crew of the Battleship Potemkin in the Russian navy were executed, and the resistance was thus broken. It was followed by a massive hunt for intellectuals, for whom Siberia became a prison camp. The relative freedom allowed by the 1905 revolution was replaced by Tsarist dictatorship.

These developments affected the situation in Kars. The region was always in close contact with the enlightenment process of Russia. The Russian Social Democrat Labour Party had a significant organization in Kars, which was headed by a Muslim intellectual, Server Atamanoglu (Atabek).

Daily newspapers were printed in Russian, Ottoman and English and the public was well-informed about these developments. In the years approaching the First World War, the economic depression in Russia was deepening. The country was weakened by the war against Japan and its rivalry with the Anglo-French block; and as political authority weakened, the opposition gained in strength.