AN EVALUATION OF THE COOPERATION BETWEEN ARMENIANS AND TURKS AGAINST THE LATINS IN THE MIDDLE EAST IN THE 12TH CENTURY
Authors: ÇELİK Muhammed Bilal , AKBAŞ Emel 
Published: July 2023

The Armenians, who were subjected to deportation many times while living under the Eastern Roman administration, were reactive against the Greeks because of their religious and heavy tax obligations. Therefore, XI. Towards the end of the century, they had a hostile attitude towards the Turks who entered the Anatolian lands at the beginning. However, this situation was short lived and they lived in peace under the rule of the Turks. The rapid advance of the Turks in Anatolia and the rapid capture of the Eastern Roman lands and forming their own administration affected both the Greeks and the Catholic Christians, who were shaken by the news brought by the Greeks and those who left their own country to become pilgrims and went to Jerusalem. Because they had been living the threat posed by the existence of the Andalusian Umayyads for a very long time. As a matter of fact, just before the start of the Crusades, Catholic Christians had started the Reconquista movement to put an end to the Muslim Arab presence in Spain with a united army. With the awareness created by this movement, they took the road to take the "holy land" by accepting the cross and to put an end to the persecution of the local Christians by the Muslims. Gregorian Armenians welcomed the incoming Crusaders with joy and, apart from some isolated incidents, made their work easier by directing the Crusaders. Due to the fact that the Franks considered themselves superior to their Eastern Christian "brothers" among the Crusaders, the bilateral good relations they had established over time began to deteriorate. During this period, although many Crusaders from the lower stratum of the Latins married local Christians, especially Gregorian Armenian women, the friction between them did not end due to the difference in sects. Since the Crusader County of Urfa is the geography where the relations between the Crusaders and Gregorian Armenians were the most intense, the marriage relations seen here were also seen among the nobles and gained enough power to have a say in the administration. However, there were also disadvantages of this intense relationship and Armenians were exposed to the ambivalent behavior of the Crusaders here. This situation continued for a while, but since the Catholic Christians began to consider the Gregorian Armenians as their subjects, the oppression of the Armenians caused a terrible disappointment and they sought salvation in their former allies, the Turkish rulers. For this reason, they asked the Turks for help many times and took their side against the Crusaders. The cooperation of the Gregorian Armenians with the Muslim Turks and their struggle to end the Crusader domination in the region show that the establishment of a Christian union even during the Crusades is a dream. The leader of Catholic Christianity, the Pope, tried to have rights over all other Christian communities because he claimed to be universal, but he was not successful in putting this thought into practice due to the ill-treatment of the knights, nobles and people against the native Christians. Although they brought new troops from the West to be permanent in the region, the Crusaders could not turn the power in their favor due to the unhealthy relations they established with the local Christians. The good relations between the Armenians, who were disappointed with the treatment they received behind this failure, with the Turks, and the policies they followed against the Catholic Crusaders were also effective.