Andranik Ozanian

Who was Andranik Ozanian?

Andranik Ozanian, commonly known as Andranik, was an Armenian military commander and statesman, the most famous fedayi and a key figure of the Armenian national liberation movement. Andranik became active in the Armenian armed struggle against the Ottoman government and Kurdish irregulars in the late 1880s. He joined the Armenian Revolutionary Federation party and along other fedayi, he sought to defend the Armenian peasantry living in their ancestral homeland; an area known as Turkish Armenia—at the time part of the Ottoman Empire. His revolutionary activities ceased in 1904, when he left the Ottoman Empire. In 1907, Andranik left Dashnaktustyun because he disagreed with its cooperation with the Young Turks, a party which years later perpetrated the Armenian Genocide. In 1912–1913, together with Garegin Nzhdeh, Andranik led Armenian volunteers within the Bulgarian army against the Ottomans during the First Balkan War.

Since the early stages of World War I, Andranik commanded the first Armenian volunteer battalion and led them within the Russian Imperial army against the Ottoman army. After the Revolution of 1917, the Russian army retreated and left the Armenian irregulars outnumbered against the Turks. Andranik led the defense of Erzurum in early 1918, but was forced to retreat eastward. By May 1918, Turkish forces stood near Yerevan—the future Armenian capital. The Dashank-dominated Armenian National Council declared the independence of Armenia and signed the Treaty of Batum with the Ottoman Empire, by which Armenia gave up its rights to Western Armenia. Andranik never accepted the existence of the First Republic of Armenia because it included only a small part of the area many Armenians hoped to make independent. Andranik, independently from the Republic of Armenia, fought in Zangezur against the Azerbaijani and Turkish armies and helped to keep it within Armenia.