Armenian Resistance to the Turkish Massacres
It is true that the battalions of Armenian volunteers took no active part in the battles of July, for they were then in the district of Van and undertaking the heavy duty of rear guard work for the Russian army and the Armenian refugees. But the Turkish Armenians behind the front, who were being deported and massacred as early as the month of July, by their heroic resistance, occupied the attention of four Turkish divisions and tens of thousands of Kurds just at the time when the Turks had such great need of those forces to aid them in their July drive. It is worth while, therefore, to point out here that, during the deportations and massacres of 1915, whenever the Armenians had any possible means at all of resisting the criminal plans of the Turkish government, they took up arms and organized resistance in different parts of Armenia.
Even before the deportations had begun, toward the latter part of 1914, the Turkish government cunningly attempted to disarm the Zeitunians, the brave Armenian mountaineers of Cilicia, who had taken up arms against the Turkish government at three different times in the nineteenth century, and each time had laid down their arms only on the intervention of the European powers, believing that they would put an end to the Turkish barbarities. This time the government filled the prisons with the prominent Zeitunians and persuaded the young warriors to surrender, promising to set them free if they did so. After accomplishing its deceitful plan, the government put to death most of the young men, deported the inhabitants, and made the mouhajirs from Balkans inhabit Zeitun, even changing the name of the place to Soulaymania, in order to erase the memory of those brave mountaineers. A group of warriors, however, found means to take up their arms, climb the mountains, and fight the Turkish soldiers. They are still free, and live among the mountains of Giaur Dagh. In the following year the inhabitants of Suediah were the first to defend themselves against the Turks. In April, when the Turkish government ordered the Armenian peasants of Suediah to leave their homes and emigrate toward Der-El-Zor, the inhabitants of four or five villages, nearly 5,000 in number, refused to obey this unlawful order of the Turkish government. With their families they climbed the Amanos mountains and for forty-two days heroically resisted the cannonading of the regular Turkish forces. Their situation was of course critical. The desperate villagers sewed a large red cross on a white sheet to inform the fleet of the Allies in the Mediterranean that they were in danger. The French cruiser, Guechène, got in touch with the Armenian peasants, informed its war department of the situation, and obtained permission to remove them by transports to Port Said (Egypt). Most of them are still there, cared for by the British, while the young warriors went to join the French Oriental Legion, and fought on the Palestine front under General Allenby.
Turkish cannons captured by the Armenians of Van in April, 1915.
The resistance at Van has already been spoken of. The next place of importance must be given to the brave mountainous district of Sasoun, that very Sasoun which had retained its semi-independent position in Turkish Armenia up to the beginning of the last century, and had taken up arms at three different times in the present generation to defend its independence against the Ottoman troops—in 1894, in 1904, and again in 1915. This last time, toward the end of June, when the troops of Khalil and Jevded began to lay waste with fire and sword the city of Moush and the unprotected villages of the outlying district, the gallant Sasounians, under the guidance of their two idealistic leaders, came down from their mountains and made several raids on the city to drive away the Turks. One of their leaders was Roupen, a self-sacrificing and highly educated young man who had received his university training in Geneva, Switzerland, and had shouldered his gun in 1904 and had dedicated himself to the task of defending Sasoun. The name of the other was Vahan Papazian (a native of Van, but educated in Russian universities), who had been elected representative from Van to the Ottoman parliament. This daring step on the part of Sasoun forced the Turkish commanders to march on Sasoun with two divisions of troops and with nearly 30,000 Kurds. From the first days of July to Sept. 8, the Sasounians were able to resist the Turco-Kurdish attacks, always with the hope that the Russian army would come to their assistance. During that interval of time, the Sasounians sent several couriers to the Russian army and asked for help, but the Russian commanders remained indifferent, in spite of the fact that the extreme front line of the Russian army was scarcely 50 kilometers (31 miles) away from Sasoun, and the sound of the Turkish artillery aimed at the Sasounians could be heard very distinctly by the Russian army. One of the commanders of the Armenian volunteers, Dro, appealed to the Russian commander and asked for one battery of cannon and a score or two of machine guns, which would have enabled his men to break the Turkish front and join the Sasounians. That request likewise was refused by the heartless commanders of despotic Russia. These were the conditions under which fell the historic Verdun of Armenia, heroic little Sasoun which, with its 10,000 mountaineers, succeeded in facing 50,000 Turks and Kurds for two months, with antiquated weapons and without adequate food or ammunition.
Making all due allowance for the relative magnitude and importance of the Near Eastern and the Western fronts, we may safely say without exaggeration that Van and Sasoun, on the Caucasian front in the year 1915, played exactly the same role which Liege played in 1914 and Verdun in 1916 on the Western front. Had it not been for these two points of stubborn resistance against the Turkish troops in the summer of 1915, the two Turkish offensives, already spoken of, would have had great chances of success. This is an undisputed fact with all the inhabitants of the Near East. And indeed, three months after these events, when the Armenian volunteers together with the Russian troops recommenced their drive and captured the cities of Moush and Bitlis, in the diary of a Turkish officer, who was taken prisoner in Bitlis, was found the following item, which appeared at the time in the Russian press:
"We are asked why we massacre the Armenians. The reason is quite plain to me. Had not the Armenians fought against us, we should have reached Tiflis and Baku long ago."
In addition to Van and Sasoun, during the same July when deportations and organized massacres were going on, three other places might be mentioned where hopeless attempts at resistance were made by the Armenians against the savage Turks and Kurds. These places were Sivas, Urfa, and Shabin-Karahissar. At Sivas the heroic resistance of Mourat and his comrades and their escape were so full of thrilling events that they have been likened to the adventures of Odysseus. Mourat is a brave warrior who, together with his companion, Sepouh, had fought at Sasoun, in 1904, and had taken part in the Armenian and Tartar clashes of 1905 and 1906 in the Caucasus. When deportations and massacres commenced in 1915, Turkish gendarmes were sent to capture Mourat, who was living with his wife and child in a village near Sivas. Realizing the coming danger, Mourat climbed the mountains with his band of warriors and resisted the raids of the enemy. After a year and a half of stubborn resistance, he descended one day to the shore of the Black Sea, captured a Turkish sail-boat near Samsoun, and, putting his comrades into it, ordered the Turkish sailor to steer the boat toward Batoum, a Russian port. According to cable messages, Mourat was chased by a Turkish gun-boat. Several battles took place in which he lost a few of his men, but finally repulsed the Turks and reached Batoum safe and sound. At Urfa the Armenians were able for forty days to repulse the attacks of one Turkish division, but finally fell heroically under the fire of Turkish artillery, commanded by German officers, having previously destroyed all their property so that it would not fall into the hands of their enemies. In the ruined Armenian trenches at Urfa, by the side of Armenian young men there had fallen dead also Armenian young women who, arms in hand, were found all mangled by the German bombs. At Shabin-Karahissar, nearly 5,000 Armenians, for twenty-seven days without interruption, in the same month of July, kept busy another division of Turkish troops with their artillery. There took place one of the most tragic and heroic episodes of the present war. When the ammunition of the Armenians was almost gone, on the last day of the struggle, nearly 3,000 Armenian women and girls drank poison and died in order not to fall alive into the hands of the savage Turks. If the supply of poison had not given out, all the women would have done likewise. An eye-witness, one who had taken part in the struggle and who succeeded in reaching the Caucasus in 1916, after wandering in the mountains and valleys of Armenia for a whole year, related how on that last day Armenian mothers and girls, with tears in their eyes and with hymns on their lips, received poison from the Armenian physicians and apothecaries for themselves and their little ones. When the supply of poison gave out, those who were unable to obtain any uttered terrible wailing, and many of the girls cast themselves down from the rocks of the Karahissar citadel and committed suicide.
Dro
The commander of the second battalion of Armenian
volunteers.
These events reveal the following facts: first, that in spite of all the precautions which the Turkish government employed to disarm the Armenians before carrying out its fiendish design, the Armenians found means to organize in the four corners of Armenia hopeless but serious plans of resistance against the swords of their enemy; second, that in order to eliminate these Armenian points of resistance during the summer of 1915, five Turkish divisions and tens of thousands of Kurds were kept employed, and were unable to add their immediate co-operation in those very days to the other Turkish forces engaged in their two offensives on the Caucasian front. These were the positive services which the martyred Armenian people rendered to the allied cause in the Near East. Their active resistance to the Turco-German plans, however, cost the Armenians more than one million men massacred under the most savage conditions, and the deprivation of their means of livelihood in Turkish Armenia. But, to complete the description of the Armenian Calvary, it is necessary to picture also in a few words the attitude assumed by the government of the Russian Czar toward the very Armenian people whose active participation on Russia's side enabled the Caucasian front to repulse the Turkish attacks in 1914 and 1915, and, moreover, to accomplish definite successes during the following year, 1916.