for many years in business in this country, joined my company and
came part of the way towards his home. The English prisoners are
treated very well in the country. This man, after being exiled for
more than ten months, had been allowed his freedom. There are
English prisoners to be found all through the country. I met several
at Tchoroum. They are allowed to have a house and servants, and are
treated politely, especially those of them who can speak Turkish.
They go and come in the fields, and even can go hunting if they
choose, and they are only restricted at night by a rule that they
must be in their house by 8 o’clock. The American missionaries have
supplied them with reading and are able to be distributing agents
for the allowance of money made to them by the American Embassy.
They are full of praise for the American Embassy, for its generosity
and care.
Some of these men had been carried in the night from Angora
eastward. When they started out from Angora, they could not
understand why they were taken at night; but when, in utter
darkness, they passed the bridge over the river beyond Asi Yozgad,
and for an hour were nearly suffocated with the odour that came to
them from decaying flesh, they knew why they were not allowed to
pass in the daylight. People say that the mountains round Asi Yozgad
are a cemetery; I could not see evidences that would prove this,
except some suspicious heaps of earth and stone that seemed to me
likely to have been raised over pits that had been dug.
In Angora I learned that the tanners and the butchers of the city
had been called to Asi Yozgad, and the Armenians committed to them
for murder. The tanner’s knife is a circular affair, while the
butcher’s knife is a small axe, and they killed people by using the
instruments which they knew best how to use.
These stories are too horrible for repetition.
The Ottoman Bank President showed bank-notes soaked with blood and
struck through with daggers with the blot round the hole, and some
torn that had evidently been ripped from the clothing of people who
had been killed—and these were placed on ordinary deposit in the
bank by Turkish officers.
An interesting story was told of the Catholics of Angora. It had
been rumoured, at the time people were deported from Angora, that
the Catholics were to be allowed to be free. But the rumour was not
corroborated, and the Government did not recognise it. So the
Catholics were all gathered together at the station and sent off.
Many of the men had been sent separately before, but this was a
second large company. I think it also included women. They had
reached this town, Asi Yozgad, and the people were there to kill
them. The priests with them begged ten minutes for prayers and the
presenting of the sacrament to them. The ten minutes were granted,
and, as the whole company knelt and prayed, a horseman rode up
suddenly, shaking a paper in front of him and crying: “Your freedom
is given! Your freedom is given! You are not to be killed!” The
officers would not send them back, but they saved their lives and
sent them south instead.
The favour that had been obtained through the Austrian and American
Embassies in Constantinople for Catholics and Protestants to be
exempted from deportation, is in some cases being faithfully
observed, but in others not at all. I was in Sivas when the rich
village of Perkenik was entirely and most ruthlessly deported. It
was an entirely Catholic village of perhaps one thousand homes. They
had beautiful horses and great flocks of sheep. The flocks and
horses were sent into the city, and the people were literally driven
out with whips. When a complaint was made to the officers that this
should not be done, because they were Catholics and had been
especially faithful to the Government at all times, the reply was
given that politics had changed, and that Italy had entered the war
since this order had come from Constantinople.
In Angora I found that many Catholic women and children had been
left there, but all have become Mohammedans. The Protestant women
and children were also still there, though the men have practically
all been taken away. A few have been heard from at Osmania.
At Süngürlü, I visited the Protestant community after I arrived in
the evening. Their story was a sad one. They had been threatened
that they would be deported with the other Armenians of the city,
but one of their number, who was in employment elsewhere but was at
home for a time on a holiday, besought the Kaimakam for the
Protestants. The Kaimakam said he had no orders, but that he would
wire to Constantinople and see what the orders were. In the meantime
they were all taken to “hans,” and families were ruthlessly broken
up. However, the Protestant community managed to get together for a
meeting, and, as a body, they put in a formal petition to the
Government for their safety, saying that they knew it was the
intention of the Constantinople Government that the Protestants
should be saved. Finally the Kaimakam yielded to this request and
returned them all to their homes; the Gregorians were all sent away
from the city, and from several reliable sources the story has come
to me that none of them got further than Yozgad alive. These
Protestants and the families of a few Armenian soldiers remained in
Süngürlü for a few weeks, and then all at once they were taken up
and carried to different villages. Again families were broken up,
and they suffered great deprivations because the Turkish villagers
were afraid to feed them. However, after two weeks’ absence from the
city, they were allowed to come back to their homes. One large
family, of the influential ones, was chosen out and compelled to
accept Islam. This family included the spokesman who had been
instrumental in saving them.
97. ANGORA: EXTRACT FROM A LETTER[138] DATED 16th SEPTEMBER, 1915;
APPENDED TO THE MEMORANDUM (DOC. 11), DATED 15/28th OCTOBER,
1915, FROM A WELL-INFORMED SOURCE AT BUKAREST.
At the end of the month of July, all Armenian men from 15 to 70
years of age were arrested without exception, bound together in
gangs of four, and despatched towards Kaisaria. Everything they
possessed had first been stolen from them, except for 3½ piastres
that each man was allowed to keep. In the valley of Beyhan[139]
Boghazi, six or seven hours’ distance from the town, they were
attacked by a wild horde of Turkish peasants, and, in pursuance of
the order, were all massacred with clubs, hammers, axes, scythes,
spades, saws—in a word, with every implement that causes a slow and
painful death. Some shore off their heads, ears, noses, hands, feet
with scythes; others put out their eyes. Thus was exterminated the
whole male Armenian population of Angora, including the “political
prisoners” who had been brought thither from Ayash and Kingri[140],
and our best poets, professors and journalists, as well as the
manager of the Imperial Ottoman Bank in Angora, and all Armenian
officials in the public service. The bodies of the victims were left
in pieces in the valley, to be devoured by the wild beasts. The
gendarmes boast about the part they played in these exploits.
Ten or fifteen days after these massacres, the Government arrested
the men of the Armenian Catholic community at Angora. A convoy of
800 persons was sent off under the same circumstances as the others.
Another convoy of 700 persons followed these, and so on—all bound
together in gangs of four, and all deprived of food and clothing.
The order had been given that these were not to be murdered _en
masse_; they were to be pushed ahead until they died of hunger and
fatigue. Then began the deportation of their families. In two hours,
all the women were collected together in the goods-shed at the
station. They were left there for from three to five days without
food and at the mercy of the gendarmes’ outrages. Children of rich
families begged for a piece of bread when they happened to see a
passenger. Part of these women had to embrace Islam; the rest, about
500 in number, were deported to Konia. The Armenian soldiers working
on the railway have been forced, under threat of death, to embrace
Islam. More than 1,500 soldiers have already been converted by
force, and they are obliged to make their children and their other
relations follow their example.
-----
Footnote 138:
Name of writer withheld.
Footnote 139:
Beinam (?).
Footnote 140:
Kiangri, Etchangeri.
XIII.
THRACE, CONSTANTINOPLE, BROUSSA, AND ISMID.
_These districts are divided officially into the Vilayet of
Adrianople, the Sandjak of Chataldja, the Vilayets of Constantinople
and Broussa, and the Sandjak of Ismid, which contains the first
section of the Anatolian Railway. Together they constitute the
metropolitan area of the Ottoman Empire, and for many centuries this
area had attracted a strong Armenian immigration, in spite of its
remoteness from the original home of the Armenian race._
_At Constantinople the number of the Armenians had risen to more
than 150,000, and in wealth and importance they were becoming
serious rivals of the Greeks. In Thrace they had established
themselves not only at Adrianople but in all the lesser towns, and
seemed likely to reap the benefit of the expulsion of the Greek and
Bulgarian elements, which the Ottoman Government had been effecting
systematically since the Balkan War. There was a flourishing colony
of them at Broussa, the chief city on the Asiatic littoral of the
Sea of Marmora, and there were not less than 25,000 of them at
Adapazar, in the hinterland of Ismid. This metropolitan region had
practically become the centre of gravity of Armenian commerce, and
the organisation of the Gregorian Church in the Ottoman Empire was
centralised here as well. The Armenian Patriarch had his residence
at Constantinople, the administrative centre of the Ottoman
Government, and there was a Gregorian Theological Seminary at
Armasha, a country town in the vicinity of Ismid._
_The Deportation Scheme had emanated from the Government at
Constantinople, but the home provinces were among the last to which
it was applied. The smaller towns of Thrace seem to have been
cleared towards the beginning of August; the clearance was more or
less contemporaneous at Broussa and Ismid; the Seminary at Armasha
was broken up by the wholesale exile of pupils and teachers, and the
flourishing Armenian villages in the district shared the same fate;
at Constantinople, the Government compiled a register of Armenian
inhabitants, singling out those who were immigrants from the
provinces from those actually born in the city, and a considerable
number of prominent people in the former class had been deported by
the middle of August. However, the Government seems either never to
have intended to apply the scheme to Constantinople in its full
rigour, or at any rate to have yielded, in the course of applying
it, to representations from authoritative quarters. The measure was
never here made universal, while at Adrianople it seems hardly to
have been put into practice at all until the 10th October, though it
was executed then with particular stringency._
_The Armenians deported from the metropolitan districts do not seem
often to have been massacred on the road—there were no Kurdish
tribes or “Chetti” bands at hand. They were despatched towards the
Arabian desert along the Anatolian Railway, and this, rather than
any clemency on the Government’s part, accounts for the two months’
grace that they received. The Armenians further down the line had
been sent off in June and July, and the metropolitan districts had
to wait until the consequent congestion had abated. The fate of all
those deported by the railway is described in the documents
contained in the section (XIV.) following this._
98. THE METROPOLITAN DISTRICTS: INFORMATION PUBLISHED IN THE
ARMENIAN JOURNAL “GOTCHNAG,” OF NEW YORK.
=(a) Thrace: Survey of the situation[141], published on the 28th
August, 1915.=
At Adrianople, all Armenian officials in any administrative, public
or financial service have been dismissed by order of the Government.
The Turkish soldiers transferred here from other districts are
committing unheard-of atrocities. The Armenians are continually
exposed to persecution. About fifty Armenians from the city have
been imprisoned or exiled. The Armenians are forbidden to go abroad,
or even to travel within the boundaries of the Province. The
Armenians of Keshan have been exiled. The Armenian boatmen of
Silivri have been imprisoned, on the charge of revictualling the
English submarines.
The Armenian Church and Monastery at Dhimotika have been confiscated
by the Government. They gave two weeks’ grace to the Armenians of
this locality in which to emigrate to other parts.
The Armenians of Malgara were also given two weeks’ grace before
their exile. Their houses are to be occupied by Turkish refugees
from Serbia.
The Armenians of Tchorlu have been deported.
=(b) Constantinople: Statement[141], published on the 4th September,
1915.=
In all the quarters of Constantinople they have begun to make a
register of the Armenians, entering on separate lists those actually
born in Armenia and those whose birthplace is Constantinople. It is
thought that they are going to deport the immigrants from Armenia.
Six Armenian pupils of the Normal School of Ottoman Teachers at
Constantinople have been poisoned during a meal. One of
them—Khosrov, born at Van—has died; the five others are under
treatment in hospital. The Turkish press at Constantinople is
beginning to prepare public opinion for the loss of Armenia. The
_Tanin_ and the _Sabah_, in particular, have devoted articles to the
subject, preaching the idea that it is in Turkey’s best interest to
have a homogeneous population. In consequence, they argue, the
Armenians must be eliminated as irreconcilable enemies.
=(c) Constantinople and the neighbourhood: Statement[141] published
on the 2nd October, 1915.=
According to a despatch published in the American Press, the
Armenians of the Pera quarter (of Constantinople) have taken flight.
Nearly 4,000 Armenians from Constantinople have found asylum in
Bulgaria. Recently there was a rumour that all the Armenians in the
Scutari quarter were going to be deported. Enver Pasha has confirmed
these rumours, and added that, if he chooses, he can have all the
Christians of Constantinople deported within a fortnight, and leave
no one there but Turks and Germans. According to another rumour, the
Armenians of Scutari and Ortakeui have already been deported. The
villages on the upper Bosphorus have likewise been cleared of their
Armenian inhabitants. We have been informed by letter that the
Armenian girls who were being educated at the American school at
Constantinople have been carried off by the Turks.
At Broussa they have converted all the rich Armenians to Islam; the
poor have been deported. Their children have been sold at 20
piastres each (3s. 4d.).
At Smyrna, several Armenians were recently hanged. The Austrian
Consul on the spot requested the Austrian Ambassador at
Constantinople to demand an explanation from the Turkish Government.
He received the reply that the Armenians possess a Patriarchate, and
ought to make any representations through this channel. “As for you,
if you are our allies, you ought not to meddle in such questions.”
-----
Footnote 141:
Source unspecified.
99. CONSTANTINOPLE: LETTER, DATED CONSTANTINOPLE, 13/26th OCTOBER,
1915, FROM AN ARMENIAN INHABITANT; PUBLISHED IN THE ARMENIAN
JOURNAL “BALKANIAN MAMOUL,” OF ROUSTCHOUK[142].
You must by now have received my second letter. To-day I shall not
be able to write you very much, for time is short and I am extremely
depressed in spirit.
Besides, what would you have me write? For ever it is calamities,
miseries and sorrows.
The last news is that the Seminarists of Armasha have been sent to
Constantinople and put under the charge of the Patriarchate. The
whole congregation, with its Superior at its head, has been deported
and the Convent has been confiscated; the Superior has even been
robbed of the £400 (Turkish) realised by the sale of the Convent’s
live stock and various other properties.
A month ago they began to deport the unmarried men from the
provinces who had established themselves at Constantinople. So far
they have deported from four to five thousand persons, and this
without warning and without giving them time to put their affairs in
order. The families of those deported to Ayash and Etchangeri[143]
had been given notice to leave Constantinople, but afterwards this
order was reconsidered. Is this the beginning of the deportation of
the Armenian population of Constantinople, for which the Government
has so far shown a certain consideration?
The majority of those who had been deported to Ayash and Etchangeri
have been brought back to Angora; at the present moment we have no
news of them, and no news either of those who have remained at Ayash
and Etchangeri. As I wrote to you in my last letter, they also have
been assassinated. Indeed, a connection of the Prefect of Police
actually said: “The Armenians are making demonstrations at Sofia,
Roustchouk and other places, and are presenting protests. We have
given them their answer by exterminating the prisoners at Ayash.”
As for the deportations from Anatolia and Armenia, they are being
continued systematically. The whole Armenian population of Konia and
Angora is on the road, and is at present concentrated along the line
of the Baghdad Railway, in the last extremity of misery. They are
being sent to Tarsus and Aleppo, to be forwarded in due course to
the desert.
In consequence of certain diplomatic representations, the Government
had given instructions not to deport the Catholic or Protestant
Armenian families, or those whose bread-winners had been mobilised.
But these instructions have been very speedily withdrawn, and are
only followed in a small number of places.
The families of mobilised Armenian soldiers who had got as far as
the course of the Railway, had received orders to wait, but we hear
now that they have been subjected to brutal treatment. These women,
who were concentrated at Eregli, beyond Konia, had made
representations to the Government and claimed the restoration of
their mobilised sons. The result of these representations is not yet
known.
The situation of the exiles in Syria is lamentable. The despatch of
relief is urgently required, in order at least to save the
survivors. Let the Armenian colonists abroad come to their aid
before it is too late. A halfpenny saves a life. Don’t disdain to
give this halfpenny.
-----
Footnote 142:
Date unspecified.
Footnote 143:
Kiangri, Kingri.
100. ADRIANOPLE: DESPATCH FROM THE CORRESPONDENT OF THE LONDON
“TIMES” AT BUKAREST, DATED 18th DECEMBER AND PUBLISHED ON THE
21st DECEMBER, 1915.
I have received information in regard to the wholesale extirpation
of the Armenian population of Adrianople.
On the 10th October the Turkish police arrested 45 Armenian
inhabitants who had become Bulgarian subjects. The prisoners were
transported to Constantinople, and thence to Asia Minor, with the
exception of 10 who escaped and took refuge in the Bulgarian
Legation at Pera. On the intervention of the Bulgarian Government
these persons obtained liberty to return to Karagatch. In regard to
the fate of the remaining 35 the Porte professes ignorance.
Shortly afterwards, all the Armenians in Adrianople—about 1,600
persons—were arrested, and the men immediately deported to Asia
Minor. The women and children were detained two days in prison
before removal, and were subjected to brutal treatment by their
captors. Several were subsequently placed in sailing vessels for
transportation to Asia Minor. Two of the vessels foundered off
Rodosto and most of those on board were drowned. Some of the exiled
families were sold at derisory prices, for the most part to Jews.
A deputation from Karagatch proceeded to Sofia to invoke the
intervention of the Government, but have received no reply to their
petition. A memorial previously addressed to the Bulgarian
Government by another deputation gives a frightful picture of the
sufferings of Armenian prisoners in Asia Minor at the hands of the
Turkish authorities.
The document furnishes a list of 29 districts in which the whole
Armenian population, numbering some 835,000 persons, have been
either killed or exiled or forcibly converted to Islam. One
ecclesiastic was burnt alive, five were hanged or otherwise killed,
and ten were imprisoned.
101. BROUSSA: REPORT BY A FOREIGN VISITOR TO THE CITY, DATED 24th
SEPTEMBER, 1915; COMMUNICATED BY THE AMERICAN COMMITTEE FOR
ARMENIAN AND SYRIAN RELIEF.
It was inevitable that the Armenians, whose deportation from Broussa
and the environs had been ordered a few days before my arrival,
should occupy some of my attention. It is doubtful whether the full
significance of this measure can be realized without a visit to the
interior, where the results may be seen in all their appalling
details. Words are inadequate to describe the utter misery and
destitution of these hordes of emigrants who are to-day roaming all
over Asia Minor. The roads are crowded with thousands upon thousands
of these unfortunate wretches, considering themselves lucky if they
are able to procure—at the sacrifice of a small fortune—an ox-cart
for their families and a few belongings; many of them journeying on
foot—men, women and children, tired, haggard, and half-starved—the
pictures of want and desolation. Broussa was among the last of the
more important cities to receive the order for the deportation of
the Armenians, so that I had occasion to see the application of the
measure from the very beginning. Thus I met the first contingents of
the exiles between Broussa and Yeni-Shehr. The authorities had given
them three days in which to clear out, with the result that they
could not sell any of their property, even had there been buyers.
All personal property, such as furniture, clothes, tools, etc.,
which they could not take with them, had to be left behind, and the
Turks quite openly distributed them among themselves, often even in
the presence of their owners! As regards the houses evacuated by the
Armenians, a little more red tape was gone through, but the effect
was the same. The Armenian proprietor was called before a
magistrate, made to sign a document that he had sold the house to a
certain individual (of course always a Moslem), and was given a roll
of banknotes. No sooner had he left the room than the money was
taken from him by the police and returned to the magistrate, to be
used in hundreds of similar cases!
I realised, of course, that I was quite powerless—even
unofficially—to interfere with these proceedings. But there were
certain other points which came to my knowledge and about which I
did not hesitate to speak to the Vali—always quite informally
only—as they seemed to me a useless and senseless aggravation in a
situation which was already trying enough. In the first place,
hundreds of Catholic and Protestant Armenians had been ordered
away—many of them had even left—although, according to the decision
of the Government, they had a right to remain. I obtained from the
Vali the promise that in future these two denominations should not
be disturbed, and that those who had “by mistake” been sent away
should be called back. This was done, and during the next few weeks
a number of Catholic and Protestant families returned. I then asked
that those ordered to leave should be given at least a week, and in
a few special cases even two weeks, in which to get ready. This
enabled many families to make the most necessary preparations for
the journey. A few casual remarks to the Vali about flogging and
forcible conversions of women and girls to Mohammedanism seem to
have put a stop also to these two outrages—at least, so I was
informed at the American School, which was in close contact with
everything going on in the Armenian community. I cannot but refer in
this connection to the altogether admirable work done by the ladies
of this institution in helping the unfortunate exiles in the most
unselfish and efficient manner. But for their devotion and practical
assistance, the sufferings of many families must needs have been
much greater.