In the beginning of this world conflagration, in 1914, both the Russian
and the Turkish governments officially appealed to various Armenian
national organizations with many promises in order to secure the active
participation of the Armenians in the military operations against each
other, the principal stage of which would be Armenia itself. Both
Turkey and Russia were very anxious to win the co-operation of the
Armenians, because, judging from their past experience, they were
convinced that without such co-operation they would not be able to
accomplish the much desired military successes on the Armenian plateau.
With such aims in view, Russia, through Count Varantzoff Dashkoff,
informed the Armenian National Council (then in existence at Tiflis)
that if the Armenians would unreservedly give their support to the
Russian armies during the course of the war, Russia would grant autonomy
to the six Armenian vilayets. The Russian Armenians, however, through
bitter experience, knew very well what little practical value could be
attached to the promises of Russian Czarism. During the course of the
19th century at three different times the Russians had made similar
promises to the Armenians when they waged war with Turkey and Persia,
and, although the self-sacrificing co-operation of the Russian Armenians
enabled the Russians to capture the districts of Elizavetpol, Erivan and
Kars in 1806, in 1828, and again in 1878, at the end of these wars their
flattering promises to the Armenians were promptly forgotten. But this
time the Armenians thought that Russia was not alone; the two great
liberal nations of the West, France and England, were her Allies. After
long and weighty consultation, with their hopes pinned on France and
England, the Armenians resolved to aid the Russian armies in every
possible way.
While Russian diplomacy was in the midst of these diplomatic
negotiations at Tiflis, during the last days of August, 1914, a Turkish
mission of twenty-eight members (the object of which was to organize a
Pan-Islamic and a Pan-Turanian movement among all the races of the Near
East against Russia and her Allies) left Constantinople for Armenia. The
leaders of that mission were Omar Nadji Bey, Dr. Bahaeddin Shakir, and
Lieutenant Hilmy, all of them very influential members of the "Committee
of Union and Progress." The mission included representatives of all the
Eastern races, such as the Kurds, Persians, Georgians, Chechens,
Lezgies, Circassians, and the Caucasian Tartars, but not the Armenians.
During those same days the annual Congress of the Armenian National
Organization was in session at Erzeroum. In the name of the Turkish
government the above mentioned mission appealed to the Armenian
Organization with the following proposition:
[Illustration: Armenians of Van defending themselves against the Turkish
and Kurdish raids in 1915. The volunteers in their trenches.]
"If the Armenians,--the Turkish as well as the Russian
Armenians--would give active co-operation to the Turkish armies,
the Turkish government under a German guarantee would promise to
create after the war an autonomous Armenia (made up of Russian
Armenia and the three Turkish vilayets of Erzeroum, Van, and
Bitlis) under the suzerainty of the Ottoman Empire."
The Turkish delegates, in order to persuade the Armenians to accept this
proposal, informed them also that they (the Turks) had already won the
co-operation of the Georgians and the Tartars, as well as the
mountaineers of the northern Caucasus, and therefore the noncompliance
of the Armenians under such circumstances would be very stupid and
fraught with danger for them on both sides of the boundary between
Turkey and Russia. In spite of these promises and threats, the executive
committee of the Dashnaktzoutiun (Federation) informed the Turks that
the Armenians could not accept the Turkish proposal, and on their behalf
advised the Turks not to participate in the present war, which would be
very disastrous to the Turks themselves. The Armenian members of this
parley were the well-known publicist, Mr. E. Aknouni, the representative
from Van, Mr. A. Vramian, and the director of the Armenian schools in
the district of Erzeroum, Mr. Rostom. Of these Mr. Aknouni and Mr.
Vramian were treacherously killed a few months later for their audacious
refusal of the Turkish proposals, while Mr. Rostom luckily escaped the
murderous plots against his life.
The bold retort of the Armenians to the Turkish proposal mentioned
above, intensely angered the Turks, and from that very day the
extermination of the Armenians was determined upon by the Turkish
government. And in reality, arrests and persecutions within the Armenian
vilayets began in the early part of September, 1914, a month and a half
before the commencement of the Russo-Turkish war. The speed of the
persecutions gained greater momentum as the months rolled by and tens of
villages in different parts of Armenia were subjected to fire and sword.
In the district of Van alone, during February and March of 1915,
twenty-four villages were razed to their foundations and their
populations put to the sword. Early in April of the same year, they
attempted the massacre of the inhabitants of the city of Van as well,
but the Armenians took up arms, and, guided by their brave leader, Aram,
defended their lives and property for a whole month, until the Armenian
volunteers from Erivan with Russian soldiers came to the rescue and
saved them from the impending doom. This resistance on the part of the
inhabitants of Van gave the Turkish government a pretext to deport in
June and July of the same year the entire Armenian population of Turkish
Armenia, with the pretended intention of transporting them to
Mesopotamia, but with the actual determination to exterminate them. Out
of the million and a half of Armenians deported, scarcely 400,000 to
500,000 reached the sandy deserts of Syria and Mesopotamia, and most of
these were women, old men, and children, who were subjected in those
desolate regions to the mortal pangs of famine. More than a million
defenceless Armenians were murdered at the hands of Turkish soldiers and
Turkish mobs. The gang of robbers, headed by Talaat and Enver, resorted
to this fiendish means to eliminate the Armenian question once for all,
because the Armenians had had the courage to oppose their Pan-Turanian
policies. The barbarities of Jenghiz Khan and Tamerlane pale in
comparison with the savageries which were perpetrated against the
Turkish Armenians in the summer of 1915 during this wholesale massacre
organized by the Turkish government. Mr. Morgenthau, who was the
American ambassador at Constantinople during those frightful months, has
proclaimed all these atrocities by his authentic pen to the civilized
nations. This was the price which the Armenian people paid within the
boundaries of Turkey for refusing to aid the Turco-German policies.
Now let us see what positive services from a military point of view this
same martyred people rendered to the allied cause on both sides of the
Turco-Russian boundary line.