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.
To this northern kaza with its roughly 30 Armenian localities and a total Christian population of 17,060,86 the Young Turk government had sent one of its most faithful militants, Mehmed Nusret Bey, a native of Janina, to serve as the kaymakam of Bayburt.
The Special Organization, for its part, put its squadrons in the area under the command of Lieutenant Piri Necati Bey. This district, through which ran the roads leading south from the shores of the Black Sea as well as the main road between Erzincan and Erzerum, was cleansed of its Armenian population earlier than most others.
As early as 2 May 1915, the Armenian villages in the northern part of the kaza were set upon by bands of çetes. The next day, the military authorities issued an order to “remove” the Armenian population from all areas within 75 kilometers of the border. The first to be arrested and murdered were the notables of the village communities. What gives a particular twist to the events of May–June 1915 is the fact that operations in this period were directly supervised by Bahaeddin Şakir, who traveled from Erzerum to Bayburt in order personally to establish the procedures to be used during the deportations and massacres, first in the villages and then in the cities and towns.
He had Nusret Bey appointed president of the deportation committee, which was made up of Piri Mehmed Necati Bey; Ince Arab Mehmed, a government offi cial; Arnavud Polis, the police chief; Kefelioğlu Süleyman Paşazâde Hasib; Velizâde Tosun; Şahbandarzâde Ziya; Musuh Bey Zâde Necib; Karalı Kâmil; Kondolatizâde Haci Bey; and Ince Arab Yogun Necib.
The trial of those who organized and carried out the massacres in Bayburt, which was held in July 1920 before Court-Martial No. 1 in Istanbul, provides us with information that we lack in the case of the other regions of the vilayet of Erzerum. The testimony of Adıl Bey, a captain in the gendarmerie stationed in Erzerum, shows that the massacres in the kaza of Bayburt were organized by Bahaeddin Şakir, the “president of the Teşkilât-ı Mahsusa” and a member of the party’s Central Committee; Filibeli Ahmed Hilmi Bey, the party’s delegate in Erzerum; Saadi Bey, a nephew of the senator Ahmed Rıza bey and a lieutenant in the reserve; and Necati Bey.
The verdict handed down by the court-martial states, finally, that the massacres perpetrated in this region were the first to be discussed and decided upon by “the headquarters [of the Central Committee] of the Union and Progress party” and that they were organized under Bahaeddin Şakir’s authority.
In the course of this trial, it was established that Lieutenant Mehmed Necati voluntarily transferred most of the mobile battalions of the gendarmerie to the front so that he himself could escort the convoys of deportees. In other words, the Special Organization considered the gendarmes to be an obstacle to the realization of its plans. At their trial, of course, Necati and Nusret adamantly proclaimed their innocence of the crimes they were charged with. They were, however, contradicted by Salih Effendi, the commander of the brigade of the gendarmerie in Bayburt, who testifi ed before the commission of inquiry that a few of his men had been charged with carrying out arrests of army deserters or draft dodgers. The gendarmes in the region had, however, not escorted the caravans of deported Armenians, who were taken in hand by Necati Bey. They never arrived in Erzincan.
Other witnesses, such as Hasanoğlu Ömer, who was responsible for provisions and supplies in Bayburt, declared before the commission that Kefalioğlu Kiaşif, a lieutenant in a labor battalion, Iliasoğlu Sabit, and others, deported the Armenians from Bayburt in several convoys: “At two hours’ distance from Bayburt, they took the children aged between one and fi ve from the convoys and brought them back to the town.”
Ali Esadoğlu Effendi, a native of Baştucar (in the kaza of Surmene), added that Nusret was a close friend of Tahsin Bey’s and that he sent 150 orphans to Binbaşihan, where he invited the inhabitants of the village to choose those they wished to “adopt.”
All reports concur about the fact that Deyirmendere, located on the first spurs of the Pontic Mountains to the north of the town, was the place where most of these deportees were put to death. It would thus appear that the CUP had from the outset planned to recover children of five and under in order to integrate them into the great Turkish family.
The age limit mentioned here suggests that the condition for this “integration” was that the children be too young to remember their origins. Interestingly, Armenian women and children were sought-after commodities. When Armenians were rejected, what was rejected was their identity.
It should be noted that Nusret Bey, the 44-year-old kaymakam of Bayburt who “committed crimes during the deportation of the Armenians from his kaza,” helped himself to the 24-year-old Philomen Nurian of Trebizond and her younger sister “Nayime.”
Accounts by survivors attest that Nusret sent the deportees to Binbaşihan and Hindihan, where he had all their money confi scated; that he was present while the massacres took place; and that, with the gendarmes’ help, he secured the prettiest girls and young women for himself and carried them off. Nusret nevertheless maintained that the convoys of deportees from Bayburt were sent to Erzincan. The court pointed out in response that they never arrived there.
The procedure employed here, at this experimental stage, was rather similar to the one that would be adopted in other areas in the weeks to come. The fi rst concrete action taken was the arrest, on 18 May 1915, of the leading personalities of Bayburt – the primate, Anania Hazarabedian, as well as Antranig Boyajian, Hagop and Smpat Aghababian, Arshag and Manug Simonian, Ohannes and Serop Balian, Zakeos Ayvazian, Khachig Boghosian, Hagop and Aram Hamazaspian, Vagharshag Dadurian, Vagharshag Lusigian, Antranig Sarafi an, Krikor Keynageuzian, Hamazasp Shalamian, and 60 other people.
Those arrested were sent to the village of Tighunk, guarded by a squadron of çetes under Nusret’s personal command. There they were shut up in a stable belonging to the mufti, Kuruca Koruğ, where a squadron of Turkish and Kurdish çetes stripped them of their belongings. On 21 May, the kaymakam had them hanged to the beating of drums on the banks of the Jorok.
On 24 May came the fi rst attacks on the villages Aruk/Ariudzga (pop. 370), Chahmants (pop. 502), Malasa (pop. 380), Khayek (pop. 361), and Lipan. On 25 May, Tumel (pop. 204), Lesonk (pop. 981), and another ten or so villages were attacked; a total of 1,775 people were evacuated and led to the gorge of Hus/Khus. Here they were massacred, under Nusret’s and Necati’s direct supervision, by bands of çetes commanded by Huluki Hafi z Bey, Kasab Durak, Derviş Ağa, Kasab Ego, Attar Feyzi, and Laze Ilias. On 27 and 28 May 1915, the inhabitants of 24 more villages were evacuated and led in the direction of Hus/Khus, but were massacred further off, near the village of Yanbasdi.
According to the report of a survivor by the name of Mgrdich Muradian, the Turkish population of Bayburt was opposed to the deportation of the Armenians; the kaymakam is supposed to have had three Turks executed to bring people to reason.
The first caravan nevertheless left Bayburt on 4 June 1915, followed by a second caravan on 8 June and a third on 14 June. In all, some 3,000 people were deported. As early as 11 June, İsmail Ağa, İbrahim Bey, and Pirı Mehmed Necati Bey set about destroying the monasteries of Surp Kristapor in Bayburt and Surp Krikor in Lesonk, after plundering them. The aim was doubtless to gain possession of the monasteries’ treasures, but also to set in motion without delay the effort to wipe out all traces of the Armenians’ millennial presence in the region, especially the superb architectural monuments of the early Middle Ages.
According to Mgrdich Muradian, who was in one of the convoys that left Bayburt in the first half of June, his convoy followed the road leading from Erzincan over the Kemah Bridge to Arapkir, as far as Gümuşmaden. There, Kurdish çetes began systematically slaughtering the deportees. A few women and children managed to make their way to a village lying between Arapkir and Harput, Khule kiugh (Huleköy). From there, Kurdish ağas took them to Dersim. In this way, 80 people escaped with their lives. They eventually found refuge in Erzincan after the Russian forces captured the city.
Keghvart Lusigian, who was probably in the same caravan as Muradian, reports that her group was taken to a place two hours distant from Bayburt; there the men were separated from the others and killed. In Plur, the convoy was attacked by Kurdish çetes, who slit the throats of the last men in the group, Hagop Aghababian, Zakar Sheiranian, and Keghvart’s brother Garabed Lusigian.
The çetes then robbed the deportees and abducted a number of young women. In Kemah, they put women, adolescent girls, and children in separate groups, which were then given as gifts to Turks who had come from Erzincan for the purpose. Four hundred women and girls were selected, but some of them succeeded in throwing themselves into the Euphrates.
According to Lusigian, some 300 women from Erzerum were “married” to officers in Erzincan and another 200 were “married” to government officials. She herself “belonged” to a kadi by the name of Şakir. It seems that the stretch of the Euphrates near the Kemah gorge also served to drown 2,833 children from the kaza of Bayburt who were too old to be “adopted.”
To be continued
Note- this chapter is from Raymond Kévorkian’s book ARMENIAN GENOCIDE: A Complete History, pp. 300-303.
