With its 450 towns and villages and a pre-war Armenian population of 110,897, the vilayet of Van, characterized by its many mountains and rugged topography, was thinly populated. It had, however, an Armenian majority. The kaza of Van, with its 116 Armenian villages and 53,589 inhabitants, accounted by itself for almost half the total Armenian population. In an environment of this sort, the Armenian committees had considerable influence on the decisions of the local authorities. As we have seen, down to early April 1915, outside the border zones, the kazas of Mahmudiye/Saray and Başkale, the Armenian population suffered only from the excesses spawned by the war requisitions. Such excesses were, in the final analysis, common in conflicts of this sort.
An examination of the events that led the Armenian population of Van to entrench itself in the old city of Aykesdan [Aygestan] on the morning of 20 April 1915 indicates that in all probability
Enver’s brother-in-law, Cevdet, returned to the region from Persia late in March with a mission: to have done with the Armenians of Van once and for all, and to begin by liquidating its three Armenian leaders, who had until then, in their role as intermediaries, helped smooth over the minor conflicts that cropped up here and there in the vilayet. The vali obviously knew, when he decreed on 18 April that the population had to turn in its arms, that he was facing the Armenians with a difficult choice.
They knew that they were doomed if they obeyed; yet, if they failed to, they would provide the vali with the pretext he needed to attack the city’s Christian quarters and the rural areas. In other words, the Armenian leaders’ strategy of temporization had become obsolete. The murder of Ishkhan on the night of 16 April and the arrest of Arshag Vramian – Van still did not know that he had been murdered – probably convinced the last Armenian leader left alive, Aram Manukian, to reject the authorities’ injunctions and prepare the city for an attack that was now certain to
come.
In examining the course of events in Van, we cannot ignore the incidents that occurred from 11 April onwards in the administrative seat of the kaza of Shadakh/Şadakh in Tagh, a little town with an exclusively Armenian population of 2,000 that was located in the mountainous area that towers up to the south of Lake Van. Here, Hovsep Choloyan and five other young men were arrested on 11 April 1915 on orders from the kaymakam, Hamdi Bey.
The people of Tagh interpreted these arrests as a provocation. Choloyan was the director of the district’s Armenian school system and also the head of the local Dashnak committee. This was the first time that the authorities had arrested an Armenian leader from the ARF’s ranks.
There was no apparent reason for their action, which met with sharp protests from the inhabitants of Tagh.
According to A-To, whose book on the events in Van, written shortly after they occurred, is the best-documented study of the subject, it was Cevdet who ordered Hamdi Bey to have Choloyan and the five other activists arrested. In A-To’s view, it is inconceivable that the kaymakam could have taken such a step on his own.
The director of the American hospital in Van, Dr. Clarence Ussher, affirms for his part that Cevdet “thought this a good opportunity” to suggest that Ishkhan go to Shadakh and conduct an inquiry so that he could have him murdered en route. In other words, Cevdet had staged this provocation, which targeted a regional Dashnak leader, in order to step up the pressure without precipitating an immediate break with the ARF in Van.
Moreover, there are indications that in late March Kaymakam Hamdi had already ordered the local Kurdish tribes who had recently returned from the Caucasian front to “hold themselves at the ready.”
On 12 April, the authorities in Tagh demanded that the Armenian population turn in its arms. It was common knowledge that the Kurdish tribes roamed this region armed; hence obeying the order would, according to A-To, have been tantamount to “committing suicide.”
The messages exchanged between Hamdi and Cevdet, discovered in the sub-prefecture after the Turkish evacuation of the area, seem to indicate that the kaymakam and the vali were aware that calling on the Armenians to disarm amounted to instigating a confrontation.
A native of Tagh, Dikran Baghdasarian, an officer who had been educated in Istanbul’s Military Academy and had recently returned from the Caucasian front after being wounded in Köprüköy, was one of the first to meet with Hamid Bey, with whom he had maintained friendly relations until then. Baghdasarian, who would become a few days later the soul of the defense of the Armenian eagle’s nest and its environs, suggested in vain that Hamdi free Hovsep Cholayan.
On 14 April 1915, the kaymakam demanded that the Armenians of Tagh open their shops and go about their business as usual. The leaders of the self-defense committee agreed to do so on two conditions: that Choloyan be set free and that the gendarmes and militiamen stationed in positions threatening the town be pulled back. Until 16 April, the status quo was more or less respected: the kaymakam was apparently waiting for orders from Van. The day before, the villages located in the eastern part of the kaza – Vakhrov, Arikom, Akrus, Kerments, Sheghchants, Arosgi, Gvers, Baghg, Babonts, Paghchgants, Shino, Shamo and Eritsu, with a total population of about one thousand – had been attacked by Kurdish tribes; the inhabitants had been forced to take refuge in the villages of Kerments and Babonts.
The skirmishes in the administrative seat of the kaza, Tagh, did not begin until 17 April, when militiamen tried to surround the upper section of the Armenian town.
It goes without saying that the two parties interpreted these early incidents in radically opposed ways. Cevdet was in the process of methodically laying the groundwork for his plan to liquidate the Armenians, who, for their part, scrutinized the authorities’ gestures and acts in an attempt to make out their intentions and react accordingly. The incident at Tagh, which gave Cevdet the opportunity to eliminate two of the three Armenian leaders, certainly helped crystallize the Armenians’ energies, while convincing Cevdet to make moves that would bring on a rupture. In any case, if we examine the violence that erupted in the surrounding districts beginning on 18 April, we can understand much better why, in the days leading up to 20 April, the Van Armenians prepared to withstand a siege of their neighborhoods.
To be continued
Note- this chapter is from Raymond Kévorkian’s book ARMENIAN GENOCIDE: A Complete History, p. 319-321.
