The massacres of the Armenian populations of the vilayet of Bitlis are generally presented as a direct effect of the “events” in the neighboring region of Van, as an act of revenge for the military defeats suffered by the Turkish forces in Persian Azerbaijan and during the subsequent retreat of Halil’s Expeditionary Corps.
However, the fragmentary information available to us indicates that, from 25 to 27 April 1915, a long meeting took place halfway between Siirt and Bitlis between Dr. Nâzım and the vali of Bitlis, Mustafa Abdülhalik.
This provides grounds for supposing that the order to extirpate the Armenian population of the region, as well as the methods to be used in doing so, were discussed much earlier.
In Bitlis, late in April, Vali Abdülhalik had three local Armenian leaders arrested and hanged. This was no longer the harassment or violence that typically accompanied the military requisitions or general mobilization, but a move designed to condition the population psychologically.
The Dashnaks were the direct target, although curiously they were still being treated respectfully in Mush. The authorities probably posed the problem in terms of power relations. After deciding to eradicate the Armenians, they had to find the necessary means to carry out the operation. There was a tremendous difference between what was required in Bitlis and on the plain of Mush.
In Bitlis, there was practically no danger that the Armenians would react if they were attacked, because there the ARF did not have a network worthy of the name. The plain of Mush, in contrast, was almost entirely Armenian and a Dashnak stronghold.
Abdülhalik could do practically whatever he wanted with the forces at his command in Bitlis; he knew that he would have to mobilize a much stronger force to liquidate the Armenians of the plain of Mush and the mountains of Sasun.
Close examination of the situation prevailing in the vilayet of Bitlis until early June 1915 leaves little doubt that there was a shortage of troops in Mush. In other words, the retreat of the Fifth Expeditionary Corps under Halil (Kut) and the 8,000 men in Cevdet’s “butchers’ battalions” (kasab taburis) – as we have seen, the two forces linked up in the eastern Tigris river valley – may be regarded as the result of a decision taken in consultation with Istanbul; it made it possible seriously to envisage translating plans into action in the vilayet of Bitlis.
The sole foreign witness to this retreat of Cevdet’s and Halil’s joint forces, Captain de Nogales, describes the mood of the two Young Turk leaders and the massacres that their troops perpetrated on their retreat through the kaza of Hizan/Khizan.
On 12 June, when the bulk of the troops struck out for Siirt, to the northwest, several officers in the battalion from Başkale took a different direction, along with the Venezuelan. “With an air of great satisfaction,” they told Nogales that the Bitlis authorities were preparing to commit massacres, and were only waiting for the fi nal order from Halil to begin.
Rather than an act of vengeance, then, what was involved was the implementation of a pre-established plan. It was made possible by the arrival of Halil’s and Cevdet’s forces, whose connections with the Special Organization were no secret.
As Nogales was approaching Siirt, the massacres began. He discovered “thousands of half-nude and still bleeding corpses” of all ages, and in such numbers that he and his companion had to “jump our horses over the mountains of cadavers which obstructed our passage.”
In the city, the Venezuelan also witnessed the sacking of “the houses of the Christians” by the police and the “populace.” In the konak, he stumbled upon a meeting to which the kaymakams of the region had been summoned; it was chaired by the commander of the gendarmerie of Siirt, Erzrumli Nâzım Hamdi, who had directed the massacres in person.
One can guess what the meeting was about. Nogales confesses that it was only now that he understood the true significance of the revelations that the officers escorting him had made the day before.
The presence of a foreigner, even one in the right camp, had obviously not escaped the attention of the Young Turk military leaders, who probably arranged for him to take another route so that he would not witness massacres like the one at Siirt.
According to Nogales, Halil, too, tried to have him killed, as Cevdet had in Van, to “prevent my revealing later on, in Constantinople or abroad, what had taken place.” Halil was planning, the Venezuelan claims, to have him assassinated at two or three days’ distance from Siirt so that the murder could be attributed “to bandits or Armenian rebels.”
Aware that he was “the only Christian … to witness things that should never have been witnessed by any Christian,” Nogales lost no time leaving the city. As he did, he passed groups of children and old men, both Armenian and Syriac, who were being taken out of town under guard.9 But merely leaving Siirt did not suffice to extract this embarrassing witness from the clutches of Halil Bey.
Reporting a conversation that he had further west with the mayor of the village of Sinan, located several miles south of Beşiri, Nogales tells us that his interlocutor insisted on learning his “personal opinion about the massacres.” Noticing that Nogales was not much inclined to say what he thought, the mayor, who was persuaded that Nogales did not understand a word of Turkish, ordered his secretary to call the minister of war immediately in order to inform him of the imminent arrival of this foreigner and his “full knowledge of everything” (hepsi biler).
In the end, Nogales emerged from this adventure unscathed; but it showed the lengths to which the leaders of the Special Organization were prepared to go in order to be able to act without witnesses or eliminate the witnesses who might talk.
We have another indication that the “blood-red general staff”11 had arrived in the area in order methodically to liquidate the Armenians in the vilayet of Bitlis: Vali Mustafa Abdülhalik, who happened to be Talât’s brother-in-law (his wife’s brother), had for weeks been recruiting çetes among the Kurds and other groups.
The recruits were put under the command of Behcet Bey, commander-in-chief of the Teşkilât-ı Mahsusa in Bitlis.
Abdülhalik had also ordered, in the first half of June, the systematic arrest of Armenian notables throughout the vilayet, as well as systematic massacres in the kazas in the northern part of the sancak of Bitlis.
Nogales learned, moreover, from “résidents étrangers,” that Abdülhalik had told them that Halil had issued the extermination order in person, and that his “vengeance” was in fact the realization of a “carefully laid-out plan.”
Between mid-June and late July, 681 Armenian localities, with a total population of 218,404, and 510 churches, 161 monasteries, and 207 schools, were to be wiped off the face of the earth with extreme violence.
To be continued
Note- this chapter is from Raymond Kévorkian’s book ARMENIAN GENOCIDE: A Complete History, pp. 337-339.
Map – http://www.houshamadyan.org/mapottomanempire/vilayet-of-bitlispaghesh.html
