By early May 1915, of the Armenian elite of Constantinople, only two figures of importance – the parliamentary deputies Krikor Zohrab and Vartkes Seringiulian – were still present in the capital. Their interventions with the interior minister and the grand vizier had not produced the expected results. On the contrary, they seemed to have convinced the two Armenians of the Young Turk government’s real intentions.
Both Zohrab and Seringiulian were encouraged by their entourage to flee the country but, reacting in much the same fashion, both refused even to contemplate leaving.
On 18 May, Zohrab told Martin Hagopian, a notable who offered to help him flee: “To whom do you want me to abandon this people, without leadership or a chief? I do not want to leave; it is my duty to remain on the front lines to the very last.”
The public announcement of the temporary deportation law on 27 May, and the information then reaching the Armenian Patriarchate about the massacres in the provinces, left little doubt about the Young Turks’ intentions. In the course of a stormy exchange on 1 June with Talât and the CUP’s secretary general, Midhat Şükrü, Zohrab demanded an explanation for the crimes that had been perpetrated against Armenians in the eastern provinces. He pointed out to the interior minister that he would eventually have to account for his actions and when that day came he would not be able to “justify his crimes.”
Sure of himself, Talât responded that he did not see who could possibly ask him to given an account of himself. The Armenian lawyer answered: “I can, in parliament, in my capacity as an Armenian deputy.” The next day, Zohrab, the Senator Zareh Dilber, the parliamentary deputy Bedros Halajian, and the newly resigned minister Oskan Mardikian met at the “Petit Club.”
The purpose of this meeting of men close to the Young Turk government was to evaluate the situation. There is every reason to think that these individuals, who knew the political mores of the leaders of the CUP better than anyone else, concluded that a program to extirpate the Armenian population was being put into effect.
Nevertheless, that evening, Zohrab went to the “Cercle d’Orient,” where he played cards with the interior minister. Two hours after he went back home, the police chief in Pera, Kel Osman, knocked at his door. Osman searched Zohrab’s apartment, confiscated his personal papers, and then asked the Armenian lawyer to follow him.
At the same moment, Vartkes was also arrested in his home. After being briefly detained in the police station in Galatasaray, the two men were transferred by boat to the train station at Haydarpaşa under police escort. Officially, they were sent to Dyarbekir in order to face a court-martial. They were murdered on 19 July on the road to Dyarbekir, shortly after setting out from Urfa, by the famous Çerkez Ahmed, who had become the head of a group of “Circassian” çetes.
According to Yervant Odian, [The cursed years, 1914–1919], Talât or his aide in the Interior Ministry, Ali Münîf, personally telephoned K. Zohrab’s wife to tell her that “her husband had died of a heart attack in Urfa.”
Note- This chapter id from Raymond Kévorkian’s book THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE, A Complete History, pp. 533-534.
In photo: Krikor Zohrab
