demonstrations, organised by our enemies, have taken place in Armenia,
and that they have caused the Turkish Government to expel the Armenian
population of certain districts and to allot to them new
dwelling-places. An exchange of views about the reaction of these
measures upon the population is now taking place. Further information
cannot be given.”
Footnote 4:
A copy of this letter was communicated to the _Berner Tagwacht_ by
Dr. Forel, a Swiss gentleman, and reproduced in the _Journal de
Génève_, 17th August, 1916. It was signed by four persons—Dr.
Gräter (of Swiss nationality), Dr. Niepage (of German
nationality), and two others whose names have been withheld by Dr.
Forel.—EDITOR.
Footnote 5:
AMERICAN COMMITTEE FOR ARMENIAN AND SYRIAN RELIEF.
70, Fifth Avenue, New York.
Including work of the Armenian Relief, the Persian War Relief, and
the Syrian-Palestine Relief Committees.
James L. Barton. Samuel T. Dutton. Walter H. Mallory.
_Chairman._ _Secretary._ _Field Secretary._
Charles R. Crane, _Treasurer_.
Arthur J. Brown. John Moffat.
Edwin M. Bulkley. John R. Mott.
John B. Calvert. Frank Mason North.
John D. Crimmins. Harry V. Osborne.
Cleveland H. Dodge. George A. Plimpton.
Charles W. Eliot. Rt. Rev. P. Rhinelander.
William T. Ellis. Karl Davis Robinson.
James Cardinal Gibbons. William W. Rockwell.
Rt. Rev. David H. Greer. George T. Scott.
Norman Hapgood. Isaac N. Seligman.
Maurice H. Harris. William Sloane.
William I. Haven. Edward Lincoln Smith.
Hamilton Holt. James M. Speers.
Arthur Curtiss James. Oscar M. Straus.
Frederick Lynch. Stanley White.
Chas. S. MacFarland. Talcott Williams.
H. Pereira Mendes. Stephen S. Wise.
Footnote 6:
Doc. 121
Footnote 7:
In other words, wherever the title of a document is given without
such a footnote, that means that the Editor is in possession of
the author’s name, even if the name is not published but
represented by a symbol (_e.g._, “Dr. L.”), or by such periphrases
as “A foreign resident,” &c.
Footnote 8:
For full text see page 572.
Footnote 9:
See “Historical Summary,” Chapter V.
Footnote 10:
Compare Doc. 101
Footnote 11:
For the real facts see Section II.
2. DESPATCH, DATED 11th JUNE, 1915, FROM AN ESPECIALLY WELL INFORMED
NEUTRAL SOURCE AT CONSTANTINOPLE; COMMUNICATED BY THE AMERICAN
COMMITTEE FOR ARMENIAN AND SYRIAN RELIEF.
A week before anything was done to Baibourt, the villages all round
had been emptied of their Armenian inhabitants. The forced exodus
from Baibourt took place on the 1st June[12]. All the villages, as
well as three-fourths of the town, had already been evacuated. The
third convoy included from 4,000 to 5,000 people. Within six or
seven days from the start, all males down to below fifteen years of
age had been murdered.
Persecutions, accompanied by horrible torture, have taken place in
the Armenian village of Baghtchedjik or Bardizag (2,000 families),
in Ovadjik (600 families), in Arslanbeg (600 families), in Döngöl
(65 families), in Sabandja (1,000 families), in Ismid, etc. The
inhabitants of Kurt-Belené (6,000 to 7,000 families) have been
expelled.
In Arabkir the Armenian population has been converted to Islam,
after 2,000 males had been killed.
-----
Footnote 12:
See Doc. 59
3. EXTRACT FROM A LETTER[13], DATED ARABKIR, 25th JUNE/8th JULY,
1915, COMMUNICATED BY THE AMERICAN COMMITTEE FOR ARMENIAN AND
SYRIAN RELIEF.
The Armenian population has been converted to Islam; it was a means
of escaping from the forced migration. Orthodox Turks are given the
wives of absent husbands or their daughters. We have been told that,
according to an order from the Padishah, everybody must embrace
Islam[14].
4. LETTER FROM AN AUTHORITATIVE SOURCE, DATED CONSTANTINOPLE,
15th/28th JUNE, 1915; PUBLISHED IN THE NEW YORK JOURNAL
“GOTCHNAG,” 28th AUGUST, 1915.
In America you have probably not yet heard of the terrible crisis
through which the Armenians of Turkey are passing at this moment.
The severe censorship to which all communications between
Constantinople and the provinces are subjected, and the absolute
embargo on travelling under which the Armenians have been placed,
have resulted in depriving us, even in Constantinople, of all but
the scantiest information regarding the whole provincial area. And
yet what we know already is sufficient to give you some idea.
In every part of Turkey the Armenian population is in a more or less
serious plight, in suspense between life and death. Apart from the
distress produced by the illegal requisitions, the paralysis of
industry, the ravages of the typhus, and the mobilisation of the
men—first of those from 20 to 45, and then of those from 18 to 50
years of age—thousands of Armenians have been suffering during the
last two months in prison or in exile.
At the beginning of the month of April, immediately after the events
at Van, the Government issued an order requisitioning Armenian
houses, schools, and episcopal residences, even in the most obscure
corners of the provinces, and making the possession of arms, which
were allowed until now, or of books and images, which were freely
sold in public, a pretext for imprisonments and convictions. The
effect of this order has been such that in the prisons of Kaisaria
alone there are, at the present moment, more than 500 Armenians in
custody, without reckoning those who, by a mere administrative act
and without any charge being brought against them, have been
deported into districts inhabited entirely by Mohammedans.
However, even this state of things is mild enough in comparison with
the condition of affairs in Cilicia and the provinces bordering on
the Caucasus. The Turkish Government is now putting into execution
its plan of dispersing the Armenian population of the Armenian
provinces, taking advantage of the preoccupation of all the European
Powers, and of the indifference of Germany and Austria. They began
to execute this plan about four months ago, starting with
Cilicia[15], where the entire Armenian population of Zeitoun, Dört
Yöl and the neighbourhood, and a considerable part of the population
of Marash and Hassan-Beyli, have been removed from their homes by
brute force and without warning.
Some of the exiles, about 1,000 families, have been sent to the
Sultania district of the Vilayet of Konia[16]. The majority,
however, have been dispersed among the villages of the province of
Zor, beyond Aleppo, and through the districts in the immediate
neighbourhood of Aleppo itself—Moumbidj, Bab, Ma’ara, Idlib, etc.
This compulsory emigration is still in progress. The same fate is in
prospect for Adana, Mersina, Hadjin, Sis, etc. As can be seen from
the despatches and letters which arrive from these districts, all
these people are being deported without the possibility of taking
anything with them, and this into districts with a climate to which
they are absolutely unaccustomed. There, without shelter, naked and
famished, they are abandoned to their fate, and have to subsist on
the morsel of bread which the Government sees good to throw to them,
a Government which is incapable of providing even its own troops
with bread.
The least details of this compulsory emigration that reach us at
Constantinople, reduce one to tears at their recital. Among those
1,000 families deported to Sultania there are less than fifty men.
The majority made the journey on foot; the old people and the young
children died by the wayside, and young women with child miscarried
and were abandoned on the mountains. Even now that they have reached
their place of exile, these deported Armenians pay a toll of about
ten victims a day in deaths from sickness and famine. At Aleppo they
need at present £35 (Turkish) a day to provide the exiles with
bread. You can imagine what their situation must be in the deserts,
where the native Arabs themselves are near starvation.
A sum of money has been sent from Constantinople to the Katholikos
of Cilicia, who is at the present moment at Aleppo, witnessing the
misery and agony of his flock. At Aleppo, at any rate, the
authorities permit the distribution of relief to these unfortunate
people; at Sultania, on the other hand, it has so far been
impossible to bring any relief within their reach, because the
Government refuses permission, in spite of the efforts of the
American Embassy.
The same state of affairs now prevails at Erzeroum, Bitlis, Sairt,
etc. According to absolutely trustworthy information which we have
received, they have begun, during the last two or three weeks, to
deport the Armenians of Erzeroum and the neighbourhood towards
Derdjan; the rest have been given several days’ grace. From Bitlis
and Sairt we have just had despatches forwarded to us, imploring
relief. From Moush we have no news, but the same state of affairs
must certainly prevail there also[17]. At Khnyss[18] there has been
a massacre, but we do not yet know how serious it was. In the
neighbourhood of Sivas several villages, Govdoun among others, have
been burnt....
-----
Footnote 13:
Name of author withheld.
Footnote 14:
See Doc. 82, page 324.
Footnote 15:
See Section XV.
Footnote 16:
See Docs. 123 and 125.
Footnote 17:
See Section III.
Footnote 18:
See Doc. 53.
5. LETTER FROM THE SAME SOURCE, DATED CONSTANTINOPLE, 12/25th JULY,
1915; PUBLISHED IN THE NEW YORK JOURNAL “GOTCHNAG,” 28th AUGUST,
1915.
Since my last letter, our nation’s position has unhappily become
more serious, inasmuch as it is now not merely the Armenians of
Cilicia who have been deported, but the Armenians of all the native
Armenian provinces. From Samsoun and Kaisaria on the one hand to
Edessa on the other, about a million and a half people are at this
moment on their way to the deserts of Mesopotamia, to be planted in
the midst of Arab and Kurdish populations. These people cannot take
with them anything but the barest necessities, because of the
impossibility of transport and the insecurity of the roads; so that
very few of them indeed will succeed in reaching the spot marked out
for their exile, while, if immediate relief is not sent them, they
will die of hunger....
6. LETTER FROM THE SAME SOURCE, DATED CONSTANTINOPLE, 13/26th JULY,
1915, AND ADDRESSED TO A DISTINGUISHED ARMENIAN RESIDENT BEYOND
THE OTTOMAN FRONTIER.
Since the 25th May last, events have followed hard upon one another,
and the misery of our nation is now at its zenith.
Apart from a few rumours about the situation of the Armenians at
Erzeroum, we had heard of nothing, till recently, except the
deportation of the inhabitants of several towns and villages in
Cilicia. Now we know from an unimpeachable source that the Armenians
of all the towns and all the villages of Cilicia have been deported
_en masse_ to the desert regions south of Aleppo.
From the 1st May onwards, the population of the city of Erzeroum,
and shortly afterwards the population of the whole province, was
collected at Samsoun and embarked on shipboard. The populations of
Kaisaria, Diyarbekir, Ourfa, Trebizond, Sivas, Harpout and the
district of Van have been deported to the deserts of Mesopotamia,
from the southern outskirts of Aleppo as far as Mosul and Baghdad.
“Armenia without the Armenians”—that is the Ottoman Government’s
project. The Moslems are already being allowed to take possession of
the lands and houses abandoned by the Armenians.
The exiles are forbidden to take anything with them. For that
matter, in the districts under military occupation there is nothing
left to take, as the military authorities have exerted themselves to
carry off, for their own use, everything that they could lay hands
on.
The exiles will have to traverse on foot a distance that involves
one or two months’ marching and sometimes even more, before they
reach the particular corner of the desert assigned to them for their
habitation, and destined to become their tomb. We hear, in fact,
that the course of their route and the stream of the Euphrates are
littered with the corpses of exiles, while those who survive are
doomed to certain death, since they will find in the desert neither
house, nor work, nor food.
It is simply a scheme for exterminating the Armenian nation
wholesale, without any fuss. It is just another form of massacre,
and a more horrible form.
Remember that all the men between the ages of 20 and 45 are at the
front. Those between 45 and 60 are working for the military
transport service. As for those who had paid the statutory tax for
exemption from military service, they have either been exiled or
imprisoned on one pretext or another. The result is that there is no
one left to deport but the old men, the women and the children.
These poor creatures have to travel through regions which, even in
times of peace, were reputed dangerous, and where there was a
serious risk of being robbed. Now that the Turkish brigands, as well
as the gendarmes and civil officials, enjoy the most absolute
licence, the exiles will inevitably be robbed on the road, and their
women and girls dishonoured and abducted.
We are hearing also from various places of conversions to Islam. It
seems that the people have no other alternative for saving their
lives.
The courts martial are working everywhere at full pressure.
You must have heard through the newspapers of the hanging of 20
Huntchakists at Constantinople. The verdict given against them is
not based on any of the established laws of the Empire. The same day
twelve Armenians were hanged at Kaisaria, on the charge of having
obeyed instructions received from the secret conference held at
Bukarest by the Huntchakists and Droshakists. Besides these
hangings, 32 persons have been sentenced at Kaisaria to terms of
hard labour, ranging from ten to fifteen years. Most of them are
honest merchants who are in no sort of relation with the political
parties. Twelve Armenians have also been hanged in Cilicia.
Condemnations have become daily occurrences. The discovery of arms,
books and pictures is enough to condemn an Armenian to several
years’ imprisonment.
Besides this many people have succumbed under the rod. Thirteen
Armenians have been killed in this way at Diyarbekir, and six at
Kaisaria. Thirteen others have been killed on their way to Shabin
Kara-Hissar and Sivas. The priests of the village of Kourk with
their companions have suffered the same fate on the road between
Sou-Shehr and Sivas, although they had their hands pinioned and were
defenceless.
I will spare you the recital of other outrages which have occurred
sporadically all over the country, under the cloak of searches for
arms and for revolutionary agents. Not a single house has been left
unsearched, not even the episcopal residences, the churches or the
schools. Hundreds of women, girls, and even quite young children are
groaning in prison. Churches and convents have been pillaged,
desecrated and destroyed. Even the Bishops are not spared. Mgr.
Barkev Danielian (Bishop of Broussa), Mgr. Kevork Tourian (Bishop of
Trebizond), Mgr. Khosrov Behrikian (Bishop of Kaisaria), Mgr.
Vaghinadj Torikian (Bishop of Shabin Kara-Hissar), and Mgr. Kevork
Nalbandian (Bishop of Tchar-Sandjak) have been arrested and handed
over to the courts martial. Father Muggerditch, locum-tenens of the
Bishop of Diyarbekir, has died of blows received in prison. We have
no news of the other bishops, but I imagine that the greater part of
them are in prison.
We are so cut off from the world that we might be in a fortress. We
have no means of correspondence, neither post nor telegraph.
The villages in the neighbourhood of Van and Bitlis have been
plundered, and their inhabitants put to the sword. At the beginning
of this month, there was a pitiless massacre of all the inhabitants
of Kara-Hissar with the exception of a few children who are said to
have escaped by a miracle. Unhappily we learn the details of all
these occurrences too late, and even then only with the utmost
difficulty.
So you see that the Armenians in Turkey have only a few more days
to live, and if the Armenians abroad do not succeed in enlisting
the sympathy of the neutrals on our behalf, there will be
extraordinarily few Armenians left a few months hence, out of the
million and a half that there were in Turkey before the war. The
annihilation of the Armenian nation will then be inevitable.
7. LETTER FROM THE SAME SOURCE, DATED CONSTANTINOPLE, 2/15th AUGUST,
1915, AND ADDRESSED TO THE SAME ARMENIAN RESIDENT BEYOND THE
OTTOMAN FRONTIER.
Since I wrote my last letter (of which you have acknowledged the
receipt), we have been able to obtain more precise information from
the provinces of the interior. The information with which we present
you herewith is derived from the following witnesses: an Armenian
lady forcibly converted to Islam, and brought by an unforeseen
chance to Constantinople; a girl from Zila, between nine and ten
years old, who was abducted by a Turkish officer and has reached
Constantinople; a Turkish traveller from Harpout; foreign travellers
from Erzindjan, and so on. In fine, this information is derived
either from eye-witnesses or from actual victims of the crimes.
It is now established that there is not an Armenian left in the
provinces of Erzeroum, Trebizond, Sivas, Harpout, Bitlis and
Diyarbekir. About a million of the Armenian inhabitants of these
provinces have been deported from their homes and sent southwards
into exile. These deportations have been carried out very
systematically by the local authorities since the beginning of April
last. First of all, in every village and every town, the population
was disarmed by the gendarmerie, and by criminals released for this
purpose from prison. On the pretext of disarming the Armenians,
these criminals committed assassinations and inflicted hideous
tortures. Next, they imprisoned the Armenians _en masse_, on the
pretext that they had found in their possession arms, books, a
political organisation, and so on—at a pinch, wealth or any kind of
social standing was pretext enough. After that, they began the
deportation. And first, on the pretext of sending them into exile,
they evicted such men as had not been imprisoned, or such as had
been set at liberty through lack of any charge against them; then
they massacred them—not one of these escaped slaughter. Before they
started, they were examined officially by the authorities, and any
money or valuables in their possession were confiscated. They were
usually shackled—either separately, or in gangs of five to ten. The
remainder—old men, women, and children—were treated as waifs in the
province of Harpout, and placed at the disposal of the Moslem
population. The highest official, as well as the most simple
peasant, chose out the woman or girl who caught his fancy, and took
her to wife, converting her by force to Islam. As for the children,
the Moslems took as many of them as they wanted, and then the
remnant of the Armenians were marched away, famished and destitute
of provisions, to fall victims to hunger, unless that were
anticipated by the savagery of the brigand-bands. In the province of
Diyarbekir there was an outright massacre, especially at Mardin, and
the population was subjected to all the afore-mentioned atrocities.
In the provinces of Erzeroum, Bitlis, Sivas and Diyarbekir, the
local authorities gave certain facilities to the Armenians condemned
to deportation: five to ten days’ grace, authorisation to effect a
partial sale of their goods, and permission to hire a cart, in the
case of some families. But after the first few days of their
journey, the carters abandoned them on the road and returned home.
These convoys were waylaid the day after the start, or sometimes
several days after, by bands of brigands or by Moslem peasants who
spoiled them of all they had. The brigands fraternised with the
gendarmes and slaughtered the few grown men or youths who were
included in the convoys. They carried off the women, girls and
children, leaving only the old women, who were driven along by the
gendarmes under blows of the lash and died of hunger by the
roadside. An eye-witness reports to us that the women deported from
the province of Erzeroum were abandoned, some days ago, on the plain
of Harpout, where they have all died of hunger (50 or 60 a day).
The only step taken by the authorities was to send people to bury
them, in order to safeguard the health of the Moslem population.
The little girl from Zila tells us that when the Armenians of
Marsovan, Amasia and Tokat reached Sari-Kishila (between Kaisaria
and Sivas), the children of both sexes were torn from their mothers
before the very windows of the Government Building, and were locked
up in certain other buildings, while the convoy was forced to
continue its march. After that, they gave notice in the neighbouring
villages that anyone might come and take his choice. She and her
companion (Newart of Amasia) were carried off and brought to
Constantinople by a Turkish officer. The convoys of women and
children were placed on view in front of the Government Building at
each town or village where they passed, to give the Moslems an
opportunity of taking their choice.
The convoy which started from Baibourt was thinned out in this way,
and the women and children who survived were thrown into the
Euphrates on the outskirts of Erzindjan, at a place called
Kamakh-Boghazi.[19] Mademoiselle Flora A. Wedel Yarlesberg, a
Norwegian lady of good family who was a nurse in a German Red Cross
hospital, and another nurse who was her colleague, were so revolted
by these barbarities and by other experiences of equal horror, that
they tendered their resignations, returned to Constantinople, and
called personally at several Embassies to denounce these hideous
crimes.
The same barbarities have been committed everywhere, and by this
time travellers find nothing but thousands of Armenian corpses along
all the roads in these provinces. A Moslem traveller on his way from
Malatia to Sivas, a nine hours’ journey, passed nothing but corpses
of men and women. All the male Armenians of Malatia had been taken
there and massacred; the women and children have all been converted
to Islam. No Armenian can travel in these parts, for every Moslem,
and especially the brigands and gendarmes, considers it his duty now
to kill them at sight. Recently Messieurs Zohrab and Vartkes, two
Armenian members of the Ottoman Parliament, who had been sent off to
Diyarbekir to be tried by the Council of War, were killed, before
they got there, at a short distance from Aleppo. In these provinces
one can only travel _incognito_ under a Moslem name. As for the
women’s fate, we have already spoken of it above, and it seems
unnecessary to go into further particulars about their honour, when
one sees the utter disregard there is for their life.
The Armenian soldiers, too, have suffered the same fate. They were
also all disarmed and put to constructing roads.[20] We have certain
knowledge that the Armenian soldiers of the province of Erzeroum,
who were at work on the road from Erzeroum to Erzindjan, have all
been massacred. The Armenian soldiers of the province of Diyarbekir
have all been massacred on the Diyarbekir-Ourfa road, and the
Diyarbekir-Harpout road. From Harpout alone, 1,800 young Armenians
were enrolled and sent off to work at Diyarbekir; all were massacred
in the neighbourhood of Arghana. We have no news from the other
districts, but they have assuredly suffered the same fate there
also.