Department of History2024-11-0920151462-352810.1080/14623528.2015.1062283http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14623528.2015.1062283https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14288/12023On 8 February 1914, Ottoman Grand Vizier Said Halim and the Russian charge d'affaires Konstantin Gulkevich signed a reform project for seven Ottoman eastern provinces that covered roughly half of Asia Minor. This international Reform Agreement differed considerably from a first Russian draft the year before. Though little known by most World War I historians in the West, this agreement was a central but fragile piece for the future of Ottoman coexistence in egalitarian terms in Asia Minor on the eve of World War I. Often called 'Armenian Reforms', it was also a last seminal, more or less consensual project of European diplomacy before the latter's breakdown in the July crisis of 1914. Important Ottoman and non-Ottoman protagonists then chose the road towards cataclysm instead of efforts for Ottoman coexistence, reform and international consensus building. The cataclysm of greater Europe in World War I produced various seminal outcomes. One main result in the Levant was a Turkish nation-state in Asia Minor that excluded Asia Minor's Christians and tried to assimilate non-Turkish Muslims, above all Kurds, into 'Turkdom'. This article argues that the agreement of 1914 had opened for a short time a completely different perspective and that it played a crucial role on the road that led to genocide in spring 1915. Its postulates are still topical.Political scienceJournal Article1469-9494212140500003Q36769