Note– According to the Constantinople’s Armenian Patriarchate’s Information Bureau, in the Vilayet of Erzerum, before the Armenian Genocide, the Armenians lived in 425 localities, had 406 churches and 76 monasteries, 322 schools with 21.348 schoolboys and schoolgirls. The total Armenian population was 202.391.
Once the decision had been made, the procedure that the authorities in Erzerum followed for deporting Armenian civilians seems to have unfolded in accordance with a pre-established plan. Indeed, a region-by-region chronology of the deportations rather clearly shows that the strategy was to evacuate the eastern kazas of the vilayet first, followed by the rural areas around the provincial capital, in order to isolate the Armenian population of Erzerum and eliminate any possibility that it might receive outside support.
Examination of the facts also reveals that the organizers of the deportation sought to empty the towns and villages lying along the planned deportation routes, and also to vary those routes so as to isolate the convoys of deportees as much as possible from each other, thus reducing the risk of resistance.
Furthermore, particularly in the case of Erzerum, the deportation committee chose to include people in certain social categories in the first convoy, such as big merchants and traders. We cannot explain this choice on the basis of the sources at our disposal, but the rapid expulsion of these prominent men, who were a burden on Tahsin and must have had support among the local Turkish population, would seem to have been a prudent next step after the arrest of the political and intellectual elite in late April.
Yet gradually isolating Erzerum also had its disadvantages. News of the massacres of the villagers from the plain or the outlying kazas reached the Armenian authorities in short order. The primate, Smpat Saadetian, reacted, as usual in the Ottoman Empire, by going to see the vali and asking him whether the Armenians of Erzerum were to be subjected to the same fate.
Saadetian asked Tahsin why there had been so many murders of Armenian draftees assigned to the ameletaburis since 14 May, and why the Armenian villagers of the plain of Erzerum, who had set out for Mamahatun in three big caravans on 16 May, had been systematically massacred in the vicinity of Erzerum.
As happened elsewhere – we have already seen how valis and mutesarifs in Van and Bitlis/Mush maintained ostensibly friendly relations with the Armenians’ civilian and religious leaders down to the last moment – Tahsin did his best to seem reassuring, explaining to the prelate that these had been regrettable incidents that would not be repeated, since he had taken all the measures required to prevent “Kurdish brigands” from again attacking the convoys of Armenian deportees.
The German vice-consul, Scheubner-Richter likewise informed the vali that he disapproved of the massacres that had been perpetrated against the deportees. In response, Tahsin Bey expressed his regrets and declared that such things would not happen again. At the same time, he took refuge in the statement that it was Mahmud Kâmil who held “real power” in the region. But all of this high government official’s skill proved insufficient to mask the Ittihadists’ true objectives. The one thing that neither the prelate nor the diplomat knew was that, behind the official figure of Tahsin, there existed a well-organized apparatus, that of the Teşkilât-ı Mahsusa, supervised by one of the three leading members of the Young Turk Central Committee, Bahaeddin Şakir.
The First Convoy from Erzerum
Obviously, the 14 June departure of this first group did not escape the German vice-consul’s attention, the more so as it included the most influential Armenian families in Erzerum.
Such information as the vice-consul possessed, however, was quite superficial: all he really knew was that the men in the convoy had been killed on the road. Only the accounts of the survivors from this group give us an inside view of the way the executioners went about their work.
Shushanig M. Dikranian and Adelina Mazmanian were both in this convoy, and endured the ordeals inflicted on it along with all the others. The two women provide converging information about the convoy’s date of departure, 16 June 1915, and the number of families it included, 25, making a total of about 150 people. They disagree, however, about the number of gendarmes escorting the convoy – one says 30, the other 50 – although both give the name of the gendarmes’ commanding officer, Captain Nusret.
Mazmanian even identifies almost all the families in the convoy: Mazmanian, Kazanjian, Ohanian, Janisian, Arushanian, Seferian, Dikranian, Nalbandian, Oskerchian, Mesrikian, Stepanian, Sarafian, Danielian, Movsesian, Musheghian, Samuelian (the two last-named families came from Kghi), Karagiulian, Der Melkisetegian, Keoseyan, Mozian, and Chiregian.
These families took 30 loads of goods with them on muleback. Beginning the very first time they pitched camp, a ritual seems to have been observed: each gendarme chose a family and sat down for dinner at the table that that family set up under a tent. Thus, this first convoy was rather special, since it was traveling under conditions characterized by a certain standard of comfort. Moreover, it did not take the northwestern route that led toward Erzincan, where the killing fields under the control of the Special Organization’s “butchers’ battalions” were to be found, but rather the route leading southwest toward Kıği and Palu.
On the third day, the relationship between the gendarmes and the notables in this first convoy began to change. Captain Nusret suggested to those “under his protection” that they entrust him with the sum of 600 Turkish pounds so that he could satisfy the demands of the Kurdish brigands dogging the convoy.
After 11 days on the road, the deportees arrived in the kaza of Kıgi, near the village of Şoğ, where they were threatened by Kurdish çetes. According to Mazmanian, the headman of the neighboring village, Husni Bey, promised to protect them from the Kurds following them for one night in exchange for 260 Turkish pounds. It was in Şoğ that the caravan was looted and three men – Musheghian, Hagop Samuelian and Nazaret Keogishian (a native of Arapkir) – were killed.
Dikranian notes that during this first act of the deportees’ drama the çetes reminded them that revolutionaries had massacred the population in Van, “tearing fetuses from their mothers’ bellies and dishonoring the young women.” They used these false rumors, spread by the Turkish press, to justify the crimes they themselves were committing.
The worst, however, was yet to come. The next day, at an hour’s march from Şoğ, while the convoy was making its way through a thick forest, the Armenian deportees were surrounded by a thousand Kurds under the command of two çete leaders from the Special Organization, Ziya Beg of Başköy and Adıl Bey (whose real name was Adıl Güzelzâde Şerif).
The two men proposed to escort them safely as far as Harput in exchange for a certain sum. They also promised to bring 50 gendarmes from Kıği in order to protect the caravan from the local Kurdish and Turkish populace. Shortly thereafter someone blew a whistle. Nusret, the captain of the gendarmerie who was leading the convoy, stepped aside and the massacre began.
According to Mazmanian, the çetes killed one of the editors of Harach, Ardashes Kagakian, as well as Kalust Garabedian; Hovhannes, Armenag, Diran and Rupen Hanesian and three of the Hanesian children; Mkhitar, Aram, Mushegh, and Satenig Mesrigian and two of the Mesrigian children; Levon and Vahan Mazmanian (their sisters, our eyewitness and her younger sister Vartanush, were abducted by Kurds); Hagop Karagulian and his wife Armig (their two children, Nvart and Krikorig, disappeared); Yervant Keoseyan and his children Aram and Dikran; the Antranig brothers; Mardiros and Karnig Dikranian, their married sister Aghavni Mnatsaganian and her two children; Arshag, Sarkis and Krikor Seferian; Garabed, Levon and Siragan Arzanian; Pakrad Daniélian; Toros Ohanian (his daughter Mayranush was abducted by Ziya Beg); Siragan Geogushian; Bedros from Harput; Hagop Nalbandian and his son; Harutiun and Hagop Alzugian; Hovhannes Der Melkisedegian, his son Hampartsum and his grandson; Dikran Oskrchian and his sons Yervant and Harutiun; Harutiun Sarafi an; Harutiun Stepanian; Kevork Ghazigian; and Garabed and Hagop Zeregian, as well as other old men, women and children whose “names” our witness had “forgotten.”
According to Shushanig Dikranian, the çetes were soon replaced by Kurdish women armed with knives, who swooped down on the rest of the convoy, shouting “Para, para!” (money, money) and rifling through the corpses. Our two witnesses confirm that two men survived because they were dressed in women’s clothing – Vahan Dikranian, who was wounded, and a servant named Parsegh, a native of Vartag.
Shushanig alone adds that the men defended themselves and killed 17 Kurds before they were overpowered and killed. A few women and their children took refuge behind Captain Nusret and thus escaped the carnage, but not the executioners’ insults and their descriptions of the way they had “hacked [the women’s] husbands and children to pieces.”
Several young women who had been stripped naked refused to follow Nusret nude. The gendarmes eventually brought them clothing stained with the blood of other, murdered members of the convoy. A few Kurds continued to attack a child. An old man told them to leave the child alone: “It’s a pity,” he said, “let me have him. Why kill him? He’ll grow up and will be able to do all sorts of things.” In the end, the child left with the remains of the convoy. Of the survivors, ten more women were carried off by Kurds. Among them were Nvart Karagulian, Mayranush Ohanian (“she is now with the çete Sayin, in a village in the Dyarbekir area”), and Vartanush Mazmanian.
After traversing Palu, the 30 or so survivors trekked through the village of Bazu, where the ground was littered with corpses and there was hardly a sign of life. A 25-year-old man, who had hidden in a mulberry tree, was apparently the only survivor. When the group reached the plain of Harput – this is an interesting detail – and then the little town of Hiuseinig, the Armenian population had not yet been deported.
When the people of Hiuseinig saw the condition of their compatriots from Erzerum, says Shushanig Dikranian, they began to realize what lay in store for them. In the principal city in the vilayet, Harput, the deportation of the population was just beginning when this group of survivors arrived. The prelate, Bsag vartabed, and other dignitaries had just been put on the road. The deportees now understood that their hopes of receiving help from their compatriots were in vain.
These 30 women and children were soon Islamicized and parceled out among various Turkish households, where some of them (Gayane Nalbandian and Nazenig Zeregian) found new husbands. After the deportees had remained there for 40 days, the deported women were apprehended by the police in the homes in which they had been placed.
Vahan Dikranian, the only surviving man, was incarcerated with the 900 Armenians being detained in the prison of Harput. Every night, Shushanig Dikranian reports, small groups of these men were taken from the prison, led outside the city limits and killed. One night the prison caught fire. The authorities declared that fedayis were responsible for the blaze. This was true in a sense: the fire had spread to the prison from the pyre on which the corpses of 20 Armenian “fedayis” were being immolated.
Shushanig Dikranian made several attempts to save her brother-in-law, Vahan Dikranian, by appealing to the military authorities. It turned out that the commander of the garrison in Mamuret ul-Aziz, Süleyman Faik, knew her family, the Der Azarians. Faik promised that he would see to it that Vahan Dikranian was not killed, even while reminding Shushanig, to show her how generous his act was, that the local authorities had in their possession “an order from Istanbul to the effect that [the Turks] should not leave a single Armenian alive on the face of the earth.”
Shushanig Dikranian asked him why, in that case, were she and the other women not dead? The brigadier general’s answer was, as it were, a practical expression of the Ittihadists’ Turkism: “Because our own women are utterly ignorant, we have to take Armenian women to improve our family lives.” Shushanig herself was confronted with a practical application of this Young Turk officer’s views. A Turkish family sought her 12-year-old daughter in marriage for their young son. The girl rebelled at the idea, saying that the people who wanted her to marry into their family had murdered her father. In fact, the approximately 200 women and girls from diverse localities who had found refuge in Harput by then were invited to convert to Islam. A ceremony was organized by the authorities. It afforded Turkish families an opportunity to select a daughter-in-law for themselves.
These operations offer an occasion to evaluate the nature of the relations that were subsequently established between the families of the newlyweds. Shushanig’s “in-laws,” for example, demanded that she procure the means they needed to send her future son-in-law to pursue his studies Constantinople. Apparently some people were not unaware that these rich families had accounts in the Erzerum branch of the Banque Ottomane.
What they did not know, however, was that the directors of this bank in Constantinople had set a limit of 25 Turkish pounds per person on withdrawals by Armenian deportees. Shushanig Dikranian’s request, made under her former name, to make a withdrawal from the bank was honored two weeks later, when she received 50 Turkish pounds from the bank, enough to rid herself of her “in-laws.”
These forms of pressure induced the Armenians to turn to the American consulate, where they were apparently well received. As the circumcision ceremony of her son Bedros drew closer, Shushanig decided to flee to Aleppo. Adelina Mazmanian, for her part, chose to return to Erzincan, and then Erzerum by way of Dersim when she learned that Erzerum had fallen to the Russians.
Note– this chapter is from Raymond Kévorkian’s book ARMENIAN GENOCIDE: A Complete History, pp. 293-296
