prepared to eat. That morning we had had bread and tea; our midday
meal consisted once more of hard Arab bread, cheese and a tin of
sardines. In addition we had a bottle of mineral water. It was not
very sumptuous, and yet it was not an easy task to eat anything in
face of that crowd of distressed and suffering humanity. We gave
away as much as we possibly could, and each of my three companions
silently pressed into my hand a medjidia (3s. 2d.) “for the poor
people.” A bag of bread from Baghdad, as hard as stone, was received
with extraordinary gratitude. “We shall soak it in water and then
the children will eat it,” said the delighted mothers.
Another scene comes back to me, which will give an idea of their
destitution. One of my companions threw away an empty glass bottle.
An old man threw himself upon it, begged to be allowed to take it
for himself, and gave profuse thanks for the boon. Then he went down
to the river, washed it out, and brought it back filled with the
thick clayey water, carrying it carefully in his arms like a
treasure, to thank us for it once more. Now he had at least drinking
water for his journey.
Followed by many good wishes we at last continued on our way, with
the impression of this misery still weighing upon us. In the
evening, when we reached the village, we met yet another Armenian
convoy of the same kind. This time it was the people of Zeitoun.
There was the same destitution and the same complaint about the
heat, the lack of bread and the persecutions of the Arabs. A little
girl who had been brought up by Kaiserswerth Deaconesses in the
Orphanage at Beirout, told us of her experiences in good German:—
“Why does God allow it? Why must we suffer like this? Why did not
they strike us dead at once?” were her complaints; “In the daytime
we have no water for the children and they cry of thirst. At night
the Arabs come to steal our bedding and clothes. They have taken
girls from us and committed outrages against women. If we cannot
drag ourselves further on the march, we are beaten by the zaptiehs.”
They also told us that other women had thrown themselves into the
water to escape their shame, and that mothers with their new-born
children had done the same, because they saw no other way out of
their misery. Along the whole desert route there was a dearth of
food—even for us who had money to pay for it—on account of the
number of Turkish soldiers passing through and resting at every han.
In Zeitoun, too, no one had been killed; the people could mention no
instance of it.
The Armenian is bound up with his native soil; every change of
climate is extremely upsetting to him, and there is nothing he
misses so much as clear, cold water. For this reason alone residence
in the desert is intolerable for him. A speedy death for the whole
family at once seems a better fate to the mothers than to watch
death by starvation slowly approaching themselves and their
children.
On my arrival at Aleppo I was at once asked about the Armenians, and
how they were doing for supplies. Their case had been taken up in
every possible way, and representations had been made to the
Government on their behalf. All that could be obtained was
permission for the formation of an Armenian League of Help, which
the Government at Constantinople as well as the Vali of Aleppo had
sanctioned. The Armenian community at Aleppo at once proceeded to
raise a relief fund among themselves, and have been supporting their
poor, homeless brethren with money, food and clothing.
In the Amanus mountains, on our second day’s journey after leaving
Aleppo, we met with Armenians again. This time it was the people of
Hadjin and the neighbourhood. They explained to us that they were
going to Aleppo, but they knew nothing beyond that. They had only
been nine days on the road, and did not ask for any assistance.
Compared with those in the desert, they were faring sumptuously;
they had wagons with them carrying their household goods, horses
with foals, oxen and cows, and even camels. The procession making
its way up through the mountains seemed endless, and I could not
help asking myself how long their prosperity would last. They were
still in the mountains on their native soil, and had no suspicion of
the terrors of the desert. That was the last I saw of the Armenians,
but such experiences are unforgettable, and I publish them here with
the most earnest appeal for help. Many of the Armenians may be
guilty and may only be suffering what they have brought upon
themselves, but the poor women and children need our help.
-----
Footnote 182:
Undated.
Footnote 183:
Name withheld.
Footnote 184:
See Doc. 68, page 272, and Doc. 69, page 278.
Footnote 185:
6s. 4d.
Footnote 186:
Tchetchens (?).
Footnote 187:
Moslem immigrants from Europe.
XX.
DOCUMENTS RECEIVED WHILE
GOING TO PRESS.
146. DESPATCH FROM MR. HENRY WOOD (DOC. I.): FULLER VERSION,
OBTAINED THROUGH THE COURTESY OF THE REPRESENTATIVE OF THE
AMERICAN “UNITED PRESS” IN LONDON.
For nearly three months now the 2,000,000 Armenians of Turkey have
been undergoing at the hands of the Young Turk Government a renewal
of the atrocities of Abd-ul-Hamid, that so far has fallen short only
of actual massacre.
So critical is the situation that Ambassador Morgenthau, who, alone,
is fighting to prevent wholesale slaughter, has felt obliged to ask
the co-operation of the Ambassadors of Turkey’s two Allies. Baron
von Wangenheim, the German Ambassador, and Margrave Pallavicini, the
Austrian representative at Constantinople, have responded at least
to the degree of joining with Ambassador Morgenthau in endeavouring
to convince the Turkish Government what a serious mistake it would
be for Turkey to permit again a renewal of all the atrocities of the
old Turkish régime.
They have been successful to the extent of securing definite
promises from the leading members of the Young Turk Government that
no orders will be given for massacres. As long as these promises are
maintained, no fear is felt, as the danger of a spontaneous uprising
of the Moslem population against the Christians is now considered a
thing of the past. The critical moment for the Armenians, however,
will come, it is feared, when the Turks may meet with serious
reverses in the defence now being made of the Dardanelles, or when
the Armenians themselves, who not only are in open revolt but are
actually in possession of Van and several other important towns, may
meet with fresh successes. It is this uprising of the Armenians who
are seeking to establish an independent government that the Turks
declare is alone responsible for the terrible measures now being
taken against them.
In the meantime, the position of the Armenians and the system of
deportation, dispersion and extermination that is being carried out
against them beggars all description.
Although the present renewal of the Armenian atrocities has been
under way for three months, it is only just now that reports
creeping into Constantinople from the remotest points of the
interior show that absolutely no portion of the Armenian population
has been spared.
It now appears that the order for the present cruelties was issued
in the early part of May, and was at once put into execution with
all the extreme genius of the Turkish police system—the one
department of government for which the Turks have ever shown the
greatest aptitude both in organisation and administration. At that
time sealed orders were sent to the police of the entire Empire.
These were to be opened on a specified date that would ensure the
orders being in the hands of every department at the moment they
were to be opened. Once opened, they provided for a simultaneous
descent at practically the same moment on the Armenian population of
the entire Empire.
At Broussa, in Asiatic Turkey, the city which it is expected the
Turks will select for their capital in the event of Constantinople
falling, I investigated personally the manner in which these orders
were carried out. From eye-witnesses in other towns from the
interior I found that the execution of them was everywhere
identical.
At midnight, the police authorities swooped down on the homes of all
Armenians whose names had been put on the proscribed list sent out
from Constantinople. The men were at once placed under arrest, and
then the houses were searched for papers which might implicate them
either in the present revolutionary movement of the Armenians on the
frontier or in plots against the Government which the Turks declare
exist. In this search, carpets were torn from the floors, draperies
stripped from the walls, and even the children turned out of their
beds and cradles in order that the mattresses and coverings might be
searched.
Following this search, the men were then carried away, and at once
there began the carrying out of the system of deportation and
dispersion which has been the cruellest feature of the present
anti-Armenian wave. The younger men, for the most part, were at once
drafted into the Army. On the authority of men whose names would be
known in both America and Europe if I dared mention them, I am told
that hundreds if not thousands of these were sent at once to the
front ranks at the Dardanelles, where death in a very short space of
time is almost a certainty. The older men were then deported into
the interior, while the women and children, when not carried off in
an opposite direction, were left to shift for themselves as best
they could.
The terrible feature of this deportation up to date is that it has
been carried out on such a basis as to render practically impossible
in thousands and thousands of cases that these families can ever
again be reunited. Not only wives and husbands, brothers and
sisters, but even mothers and their little children have been
dispersed in such a manner as to preclude practically all hope that
they will ever see each other again.
Simultaneously with these arrests of the population throughout the
Empire, the police at Constantinople swooped down on the alleged
leaders of an Armenian society that was declared to have for its
object not only the wresting from the Turkish Empire of part of its
territory for the establishment of an independent Armenia, but also
the overthrow of the Turkish Government. These were tried by court
martial, and on the 15th June nineteen of them were hanged in front
of the Ministry of War at Constantinople. Among the number was one
man who had been a cashier for the Singer Sewing Machine Company in
one of its Turkish branches. As a result of vigorous protests which
followed on the part of prominent people at Constantinople, the
Turks at once promised that no more wholesale hangings should take
place.
Of all the terrible vengeances so far meted out by the Turks in the
present anti-Armenian crusade, none appear to have equalled that
inflicted on the population of the city of Zeitoun. This was an
Armenian town of 20,000 population which had never as a matter of
fact been completely subjected by the Turks. Situated well up in
almost inaccessible mountain fastnesses, it had even maintained a
sort of independence.
With the participation of Turkey in the present war and the need of
every possible man for military service, a detachment of Turkish
soldiers was sent against the town, with orders to force the young
Armenians to accept military service. The latter instead attacked
the Turkish soldiers, killed some 300 of them and, with the
additional arms thus secured, prepared for a determined resistance.
An overwhelming Turkish force, however, was sent against the town;
it fell, and then the Turks carried out in the extremest degree
their newly devised system of deportation and dispersion.
Twenty thousand Turks from Thrace were taken to Zeitoun and
established in the houses that for generations had belonged to the
Armenian families. The latter were then scattered to the four winds
of the Empire.
I talked with eye-witnesses who, coming to Constantinople from the
interior, had seen this miserable population being dispersed and
deported. They were being herded across the country by soldiers in
groups ranging from 50 to several hundred. Old men who were unable
to maintain the fast pace set by the mounted soldiers were beaten
till they fell dead in their tracks. Children who were likewise too
tender to stand the terrible strain dropped out by the wayside,
while the mothers were driven relentlessly on with no hopes of ever
again being able to find their little ones. Other mothers with
babies in arms, unable to see the latter die under their very eyes,
unable to give them the nourishment necessary to sustain life, and
unable to bear the agony of leaving them by the wayside to an
unknown fate, dropped them in wells as they passed, thus ending the
sufferings of the little ones and having at least the consolation of
knowing their fate.
The bulk of this miserable population from Zeitoun, that was able to
withstand this herding across the desert interior of Asiatic Turkey,
was planted largely in two places. One portion was established in a
marshy region which, up to the present time, had never been
habitable on account of the deadly malaria; the other portion was
sent down in the direction of the Persian Gulf, to a locality so
deadly that the poor victims prayed to be sent to the malarial
marshes instead. Their prayers were in vain.
As in the system of deportation carried out in all other portions of
the Empire, scores if not hundreds of these families from Zeitoun
were separated and transplanted in such a manner as practically to
preclude all possibility of their ever being reunited again.
In defence of these terrible measures which have been taken, the
Turks at Constantinople declare that no one but the Armenians
themselves is to blame. They state that when the present attack
began on the Dardanelles, the Armenians were notified that if they
took advantage of the moment when the Turks were concentrating every
energy for the maintenance of the Empire, to rise in rebellion, they
would be dealt with without quarter. This warning, however, the
Armenians failed to heed. They not only rose in rebellion, occupying
a number of important towns, including Van, but extended important
help to the Russians in the latter’s campaign in the Caucasus. As
all these Armenians are Ottoman subjects, they have to be dealt with
according to the stringent Turkish laws on such subjects.
While the Turks freely admit that this revolt of the Armenians was
and is confined to those living near the Russian border, the
authorities at Constantinople declare that at the present moment,
when the very existence of the Empire is at stake from the attacks
of outside enemies, it is quite out of the question for them to
search out among the 2,000,000 Armenians of the Turkish Empire the
comparatively few guilty ones and punish them alone. They declare
that they have no choice except to ensure their safety against all
the Armenians. By punishing all, they are certain to strike down the
guilty ones and to prevent any more uprisings among the others.
While this is the Turkish side of the situation, there is also
another side which I shall give on the authority of men who have
passed practically their entire lives in Turkey and whose names, if
I dared mention them, would be recognised in both Europe and America
as competent authority. According to these men, the decision has
gone out from the Young Turk Party that the Armenian population of
Turkey must be set back fifty years. This has been decided upon as
necessary in order to ensure the supremacy of the Turkish race in
the Ottoman Empire, which is one of the basic principles of the
Young Turk Party. The situation, I am told, is absolutely analogous
to that which preceded the Armenian massacres under Abd-ul-Hamid. So
far, however, the Young Turks have confined themselves to the new
system of deportation, dispersion and separation of families.
To the Armenian population in general that is affected at the
present moment by the carrying out of these orders, I have found but
one exception. This is the Armenian population of Constantinople,
which numbers about 70,000. There Ambassador Morgenthau assumed a
sort of unofficial protectorate and guarantee for the Armenians,
with the result that up to the present moment less than 300 of them
have been molested.
So terrible have been the sufferings of the Armenians during the
past three months that at the moment I left Constantinople, in order
to be able to write this story, there had begun a reversal of
feeling towards them even amongst the Turks themselves. The latter
declared that the orders, which had been issued solely as a
necessary safeguard for the Empire against the Armenians, had been
carried out by the local authorities, especially in the districts
far from Constantinople, with a degree of severity that had never
been intended. Talaat Bey, Minister of the Interior, had even begun
to permit a few dozen of the men, whose loyalty to the Turkish
Government was beyond question, to return to their homes.
The condition of the Armenian population at the present moment,
however, is pitiful beyond words. Practically all the families have
been deprived of their means of support by the deportation of the
husbands, fathers and sons. The women and children who have been
left behind to shift for themselves are practically helpless, as at
the present moment, when the entire Empire is being drained of every
resource for the carrying on of the war, neither work nor food is to
be had. In thousands of cases, too, the deported families have been
planted among strong Musulman communities, where the Christian
Armenians are despised and opposed at every turn.
In the midst of all this misery help is only being extended from two
quarters. Ambassador Morgenthau, at Constantinople, is working day
and night to induce the Turkish Government to relent from the
severity of its measures, and the American missionaries throughout
the Empire have also dropped all thought of religious propaganda in
order to attend to the material needs of the victims. Their combined
efforts, however, constitute hardly a drop of help in the whole sea
of misery.
The situation is rendered especially difficult by the fact that
nothing can be done in an official way even by governments like the
United States. The Armenians are subjects of the Ottoman Empire, and
the latter has the full right to deal with them as it thinks
necessary in the interests of the Empire as a whole.
147. URMIA, SALMAS, AND HAKKIARI: FULLER STATEMENT BY MR. PAUL
SHIMMON, EDITED, AS A PAMPHLET, BY THE REV. F.N. HEAZELL,
ORGANISING SECRETARY OF THE ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY’S ASSYRIAN
MISSION.
The scene of the Assyrian massacres is the plain of Urmi (or Urmia)
on the west side of the lake of that name in N.W. Persia. The city
of Urmi is situated on the western side of the lake; further west
are the mountains of Kurdistan, forming the frontier between Turkey
and Persia. These mountains give shelter to the wild bands of Kurds
(ever ready to descend on the plain of Urmi), who can easily retire
to their inaccessible homes with their ill-gotten spoil. For some
years past a Russian force has been stationed in the Urmi plain,
with the object of keeping the Kurds under control. These troops
were distributed between Khoi, Salmas, Urmi, and Soujboulak, at the
extreme south of the lake. Urmi is an isolated spot, and, from a
military point of view, ill-suited for defence against a strong
attacking force. It is easily accessible to the Kurds from the west,
while the two high passes on both north and south, and the lake on
the east, seal up a besieged army in a very dangerous locality.
The plain of Urmi has a charm for all travellers; in the spring and
early summer it is a veritable paradise. Its running waters, its
gardens, its vineyards, orchards, and melon fields, its tobacco
plantations and rice fields, give a variety of colour and a beauty
of scene seldom met with in the East.
The plain of Urmi is the home of some thirty-five thousand of the
Assyrian (or East Syrian) Christians, part of whom dwell in the
city, the rest being distributed among seventy villages scattered
over the plain. These people are cultivators of the soil and keepers
of vineyards. Away to the west, united to them by religion and
language, five the mountaineer Syrians. First, we have many villages
in the districts of Tergawar and Mergawar, both in Persia; then
comes Nochea, the seat of the Metropolitan Bishop, Mar Khananishu.
Still further west, over the frontier into Turkey, in the very heart
of the mountains, dwells the Patriarch, Mar Shimun, at once a civil
and ecclesiastical ruler, who is responsible to the Turkish
Government for the independent tribes of Baz, Djîlu, Tkhuma, and
Tiari, who are spread over the tract of country which stretches from
Djoulamerk to Amadia and then down towards Mosul.
The proverbial “calm before the storm” was literally true in the
case of the massacre of the Syrian Christians. In the Urmi plain,
the presence of Russian troops for many years past brought security
and prosperity. Raiding on the part of the Kurds was stopped, and
highway robbery was no longer heard of. It did not mean that the
Moslems were any more friendly disposed towards the Christians; they
feared them, that was all. The old hatred for the Christian race
slumbered for a time, and dared not show itself, so long as the
Russian troops were there to see that the peace was not disturbed.
Events began to take a different turn with the outbreak of war in
Europe. The Kurds, always ready for a fight, began to plunder the
rich districts of Tergawar and Mergawar; the Christian inhabitants
fled to Urmi, and were distributed among the villages of the plain.
In October, 1914, the Kurds made a determined effort to capture the
city. A violent assault was made by them, and for a time they
withstood the fire of the Russian artillery. They sacked and burned
the villages of Anhar and Alwach, and advanced within gunshot of the
city. Reinforcements arrived, and with the help of Syrians, armed by
the Russians, the Kurds and Turks were driven back. Then it was that
the Russian officers found that the Syrians could do great service
in scouting, and they employed trained Syrians to keep open the
lines of communication.
Such was the condition of affairs before the declaration of war
between the Allied Powers and Turkey. After the declaration of war
the curtain was withdrawn and the drama was played, the like of
which has not yet been seen, even in this most cruel war.
The Turks had become aggressive on the Russian frontier near the
Caucasus. In December they massed troops at Sari-Kamysh, near Kars,
and sought to cut the railway to Tiflis. This created a scare in the
Caucasus which was serious enough to cause a withdrawal of the
Russian forces from N.W. Persia. Orders reached Urmi on the 30th
December for the withdrawal of the Russian troops, but these were
not made known to the European missionaries and Syrians until three
days later. The news came like a thunderclap. The Christian
inhabitants were entirely unprepared; when they awoke to the fact of
the danger they were in, they found that the roads were all blocked,
the Russian protectors had left, means of transport were wanting,
the Kurdish and Turkish armies were almost at the city gates; they
were caught in a trap. A large number of the Syrians outside the
city and many Armenians were able to get away; most of these were
from the Nazlu district, others were refugees from the Turkish
frontier, some ten thousand in all. Two English missionaries then
left, also the Belgian officials of the Persian Government and some
prominent Syrians of Urmi. All the rest remained behind.