The kaza of Şatak/Shadakh, with its rugged relief traversed by deep gorges, was located in the foothills of the Taurus. In 1915, it boasted 65 Armenian localities with a total population of 8,433.
The administrative seat of the kaza, Tagh, which straddled the eastern branch of the Tigris, had just over one thousand inhabitants, almost all of them Armenian; a few government officials also resided there, including the kaymakam, Hamdi Bey.
It was in Tagh, as we have seen, that the first tensions between the authorities and the local population sprang up, beginning on 11 April, with the arrest of Hovsep Choloyan and the kaymakam’s attempt, the next day, to confiscate the weapons held by the population. Although an armed peace prevailed here until 17 April, information that arrived in Tagh on 16 April about the attack carried out by Kurdish çetes on the Armenian villages in the eastern part of the kaza the day before only intensified the inhabitants’ suspicions of the authorities.
At this point, Dikran Baghdasarian, an officer who had been trained in Istanbul’s Military Academy, decided to begin preparing Tagh to defend itself in case of attack. According to A-To, he had 70 Armenian fighters at his disposal, against the 150 gendarmes and militiamen present in the village. On 16 April, the whole population was assembled in the quarter located on the left bank of the eastern Tigris, by far the biggest quarter in Tagh, which stood facing on the right bank the quarter known as “The Mills.”
Here, the local government and the forces at its disposal were to be found. In other words, both sides were camped at their positions, and any attempt to enter one quarter from the other could only be perceived as an act of aggression. The balance was upset on 17 April, when the young men who controlled access to the upper quarter – that is, the three bridges linking the two parts of the town (only the central bridge was made of stone) – refused to let militiamen cross one of the bridges. The ensuing exchange of gunfire announced the beginning of hostilities. In the upper quarter of the town, where the inhabitants now dug in, communication took place through holes in the party walls of adjoining houses.
The self-defense committee headed by Dikran Baghdasarian established a general defense plan that took account not only of the inhabitants of Tagh, but also those of the kaza’s villages. To cut off access to the area from the south, the committee decided to seize control of the Khlkdun/Hlkdun Bridge, which spanned the Upper Tigris. Only by crossing this bridge, located two hours south of Tagh, could the Kurdish Halili, Havşdun, Eztini, and Alani tribes, which were based in the south, reach the Tagh area.
Thus, the safety of all the villages located on the right bank of the eastern Tigris was assured. A second defensive position was established at Pols, northwest of Tagh. It controlled the road from Moks and another road farther to the north, as well as two dams – one near Hashgants, an hour to the north, the other near Sozvants, half an hour to the west.
These were the only access routes to the hinterland, in particular the plain of Pzantashd to the northwest, the key to communications in the area.
On 20 April, the Armenians in Tagh burned the wooden bridge leading to “The Mills” in order to forestall an attack from the rear. On 22 April, their northern position at Hashgants was captured by Kurdish çetes, but Pols continued to resist, while the bridge located at the exit from Hashgants succeeded in holding off the Kurdish tribes until 1 May. The kaymakam let it be known that Hovsep Choloyan and his five comrades had been executed the same
day in the jail in Tagh.
By early May, the pressure brought to bear by the Turkish forces had become so intense that the self-defense committee decided to regroup its forces – joined by villagers from the valley of Gaghbi (to the southwest) – in an area near Dzidants, one hour west of Tagh.
The objective was to reduce the length of the front. On 19 April, the kaymakam of Norduz, Halet Bey, had arrived in the kaza with reinforcements of 60 men. Concentrating the Armenians from the surrounding villages in Tagh and other defensive positions had led to the desertion of the Kurdish contingents; the pressure on the Armenians did not, however, diminish as a result.
On 29 April, the fighting grew more bitter when the notorious Kurdish chieftain Lazkin Şakiroğlu, who had just finished attending to business in the villages in the kaza of Gevaş, arrived in Shadakh by way of Norduz and took Arikom and then Krments, forcing their inhabitants to flee to Tagh.
Cevdet, however, seems to have been late in delivering the ammuntion and two cannons that he had promised to kaymakams Hamdi and Halet. It was not until 5 May that he informed them that this materiel would soon arrive, while recommending to the two officials that they maintain Lazkin and his çetes in the area.
At this point in the confrontation, control of the northern front, the key to access to the plain of Pzantashd, where a good number of refugees from the kaza of Gevaş were concentrated, constituted a major stake of the battle. This position was the more critical in that it dominated the access route from Vostan and Van. Beginning on 17 April, fierce combats took place here. They continued until 20 April, even as thousands of fugitives from the villages in the southern part of the kaza of Gvaş, such as Nor Kiugh, Mokhrapert, Kantsag, Varents, and Entsag sought haven in the district. They were joined at the end of the month by refugees from Hayots Tsor and Timar, raising the number of displaced persons in the area to approximately 6,000.
Levon Shaghoyan led the resistance here, which was mounted by fighters from the kaza of Gvaş. It cut off direct access to Tagh for the reinforcements that had been sent from Van, forcing them to take roundabout routes. The fighting focused on two key points in the valley: Shahrur Castle, which was subjected to the fiercest attack by Hüseyin Ağa on 29 April, and Paratodig, which was threatened the same day by 500 men equipped with a cannon, who had been sent from Van to reinforce the government troops. Unable to break the resistance at these two points, the reinforcements had to make their way through the rugged eastern Tigris river valley, and thus did not reach Tagh until 18 May.
The other fronts did not hold up as well. In Pols, northwest of Tagh, and at the Hashgants Bridge on the road from Moks, Kurdish forces pushed the Armenian fighters back to Dzidzants, where there was extremely fierce fighting on 9 and 10 May. It was, however, the 11 May fall of Sozvants, to the west of Tagh, which destabilized the Armenian resistance and led to the complete encirclement of Tagh. Only the forces positioned to the north, in Sindgin and on the plain of Pzantashd, were able to break out of this encirclement.
On 18 May, these forces tried to recapture Sozvants. Meanwhile, the cannons dispatched from Van finally arrived in Tagh, where they immediately went into action. Their belated arrival no doubt prevented the kaymakam from better exploiting his advantage. On the morning of 21 May, Armenian rearguard forces recaptured Sozvants and thus broke the siege of the town.
On 23 May, Hamdi Bey and the müdir of the Alani, Şevket, resigned themselves to abandoning Tagh because Tro’s (dashnak military chief) battalion of Armenian volunteers from the Caucasus had already reached Sindgin.
By the end of the day, when Shadakh came under Russian control, all the villages of the eastern and western parts of the kaza had been razed. Their inhabitants were now crowded into Tagh. As for the villagers from the southern part of the kaza, they had either regrouped in Gaghbi, Gajet, and Armshad or fl ed to Moks and Sindgin. The fate of the 45 villages of the kaza of Moks and its 4,459 Armenians offers a telling indication of the influence of local officials or tribal chieftains: these Armenians were never molested, thanks to the protection of a Kurdish chieftain, Murtula Beg, who refused to execute orders he had received from Van.
To be continued
Note- this chapter is from Raymond Kévorkian’s book ARMENIAN GENOCIDE: A Complete History, pp. 331-333.
In picture- today’s Shatakh
