The kaza of Kiskim, in which the 13 villages of Khodorchur were located, had an Armenian population of 8,136. Most of these Armenians were Catholics. Kiskim, a mountain district well suited for sheep breeding, was one of the most isolated areas in the vilayet of Erzerum.
The villagers of Khodorchur were rich and peaceably inclined. When the general mobilization was announced, they chose to pay the bedel for both themselves and the emigrants from the area working abroad, rather than serve in the Ottoman Army.
From late August 1914 on, they also lodged and fed several battalions of the Ottoman army – protesting mildly, and to no avail, when the army requisitioned all their horses and mules.
In December 1914, the little town of Garmirk was also visited by some 30 çetes, who plundered and beat the villagers and imposed a tax of 300 Turkish pounds on them. But these were, after all, classic practices. The house searches conducted in February 1915 by gendarmes looking for arms had been more alarming, especially because they were accompanied by acts of torture and the arrest of village notables, as in Mokhragud (Harutiun Dzarigian) and Khodorchur (Joseph Mamulian).
Because the majority of Armenians in Khodorchur were Catholics, they had until then benefited from the protection of French and Austro-Hungarian diplomats. Hence, they were probably hoping when they received the deportation order that the ambassador of Austria-Hungary would see to it that they were not harmed.
Interestingly, negotiations conducted by the German vice-consul in Erzerum at the Austrian ambassador’s request, though dragging on from June to September 1915, succeeded in saving only about a dozen Armenian Sisters of the Immaculate Conception and a few Mkhitarist monks; the Catholics of Khodorchur as a whole were not spared.
Quite the contrary: in May 1915, the local authorities proceeded to arrest 27 priests who had been educated in Rome or at the seminary of Saint-Sulpice in Paris – among them the primate, Harutiun Turshian, as well as some 30 schoolteachers.
Late in May, the kaymakam, Necati Bey, summoned the notables of Khodorchur and informed them of the deportation order, adding that they would not be allowed to sell their assets before setting out. A few local notables nevertheless encouraged Armenians to entrust their property to them pending their return. Besides Necati, among the main organizers of the deportation and spoliation of the Armenians were local dignataries such as Ali Beg, Sahuzoğlu Dursun, Kürdoğlu Mahmud, and Ömerzâde Mehmed.
The Armenians of Khodorchur were deported in five convoys. The first two set out early in June. The first was made up of 300 families comprising 3,740 individuals from the villages of Khodorchur. There were 200 families comprising some 1,500 individuals in the second, almost all of them from Kudrashen and Kiskim; they were massacred between Kasaba and Erzincan.
The third convoy, made up of villagers from Garmirk (pop. 600) and Hidgants, set out on 8 June 1915. It was soon incorporated into the second caravan from Erzerum, and shared its fate. Twenty survivors, after passing through Bayburt, Erzincan, Kemah, Eğin, Malatia, Arapkir, Samsad, Suruc, Raffa, Birecik and Urfa, were registered in Aleppo on 22 December 1918.
The fourth convoy, which included villagers from Mokhrgud (pop. 350), Kotkan, Atik, Grman, Sunik, Gakhmukhud, Keghud, Jijaroz/Jijabagh, Gisag, Michin Tagh and Khantatsor, followed a route much like that taken by the third convoy as far as Samsad. It was then decimated on the banks of the Euphrates between Ğantata et Ğavanluğ by regular troops and çetes under the command of Samsadlı Haci Şeyh Içko.
The fifth and final convoy included only a few deportees, the last inhabitants of the villages all but emptied by the fourth convoy, above all old people and the infirm. They were massacred in Poşin, on orders from the mutesarif of Severek, by Severeklı Ahmed Çavuş and his çetes. Eight of those in this convoy survived. A total of around 100 people from all theArmenian localities in the kaza survived.
To be continued
Note- this chapter is from Raymond Kévorkian’s book ARMENIAN GENOCIDE: A Complete History, pp. 307-308.
In picture- Khodorchur, today’s Sirakonaklar, www.houshamadyan.org
