page_title: Andranik
section_title: Immigration and conflict with the ARF
hierarchical_section_title: Andranik / Immigration and conflict with the ARF
caption_attribution_description: English: Zoravar Andranik in Sophia 1912 (Balkan Wars)
context_page_description: Andranik Ozanian, commonly known as Andranik was an Armenian military commander and statesman, the best known fedayi and a key figure of the Armenian national liberation movement. From the late 19th century to the early 20th century, he was one of the main Armenian leaders of military efforts for the independence of Armenia.
  He became active in an armed struggle against the Ottoman government and Kurdish irregulars in the late 1880s. Andranik joined the Armenian Revolutionary Federation party and, along with other fedayi, sought to defend the Armenian peasantry living in their ancestral homeland, an area known as Western Armenia—at the time part of the Ottoman Empire. His revolutionary activities ceased and he left the Ottoman Empire after the unsuccessful uprising in Sasun in 1904. In 1907, Andranik left Dashnaktustyun because he disapproved of its cooperation with the Young Turks, a party which years later perpetrated the Armenian Genocide. Between 1912 and 1913, together with Garegin Nzhdeh, Andranik led a few hundred Armenian volunteers within the Bulgarian army against the Ottomans during the First Balkan War.
context_section_description: From Persia, Andranik moved to the Caucasus, where he met the Armenian leaders in Baku and Tiflis. He then left Russia and traveled to Europe, where he was engaged in advocacy in support of the Armenians' national liberation struggle. In 1906 in Geneva, he published a book on military tactics. Most of the work was about his activities and the strategies he used during the 1904 Sasun uprising.
  In February–March 1907, Andranik went to Vienna to participate in the fourth ARF Congress. The ARF, which had been associating with Turkish immigrant political groups in Europe since 1902, discussed and approved the negotiations with the Young Turks—who later perpetrated the Armenian Genocide—to overthrow Sultan Abdul Hamid II. Andranik strongly denounced this cooperation and left the party. In 1908, the ARF asked Andranik to move to Constantinople and nominate his candidacy in the Ottoman parliament election, but he declined the offer, saying "I don't want to sit there and do nothing". Andranik distanced himself from active political and military affairs for several years.
caption: Andranik in Bulgarian army c. 1913
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