Why Armenia Should Be Free: Armenia's Rôle in the Present War

by Armen Garo

Turkish and Russian Proposals to the Armenians in 1914.

In the beginning of this world conflagration, in 1914, both the Russian and the Turkish governments officially appealed to various Armenian national organizations with many promises in order to secure the active participation of the Armenians in the military operations against each other, the principal stage of which would be Armenia itself. Both Turkey and Russia were very anxious to win the co-operation of the Armenians, because, judging from their past experience, they were convinced that without such co-operation they would not be able to accomplish the much desired military successes on the Armenian plateau.

With such aims in view, Russia, through Count Varantzoff Dashkoff, informed the Armenian National Council (then in existence at Tiflis) that if the Armenians would unreservedly give their support to the Russian armies during the course of the war, Russia would grant autonomy to the six Armenian vilayets. The Russian Armenians, however, through bitter experience, knew very well what little practical value could be attached to the promises of Russian Czarism. During the course of the 19th century at three different times the Russians had made similar promises to the Armenians when they waged war with Turkey and Persia, and, although the self-sacrificing co-operation of the Russian Armenians enabled the Russians to capture the districts of Elizavetpol, Erivan and Kars in 1806, in 1828, and again in 1878, at the end of these wars their flattering promises to the Armenians were promptly forgotten. But this time the Armenians thought that Russia was not alone; the two great liberal nations of the West, France and England, were her Allies. After long and weighty consultation, with their hopes pinned on France and England, the Armenians resolved to aid the Russian armies in every possible way.

While Russian diplomacy was in the midst of these diplomatic negotiations at Tiflis, during the last days of August, 1914, a Turkish mission of twenty-eight members (the object of which was to organize a Pan-Islamic and a Pan-Turanian movement among all the races of the Near East against Russia and her Allies) left Constantinople for Armenia. The leaders of that mission were Omar Nadji Bey, Dr. Bahaeddin Shakir, and Lieutenant Hilmy, all of them very influential members of the "Committee of Union and Progress." The mission included representatives of all the Eastern races, such as the Kurds, Persians, Georgians, Chechens, Lezgies, Circassians, and the Caucasian Tartars, but not the Armenians. During those same days the annual Congress of the Armenian National Organization was in session at Erzeroum. In the name of the Turkish government the above mentioned mission appealed to the Armenian Organization with the following proposition:

"If the Armenians,—the Turkish as well as the Russian Armenians—would give active co-operation to the Turkish armies, the Turkish government under a German guarantee would promise to create after the war an autonomous Armenia (made up of Russian Armenia and the three Turkish vilayets of Erzeroum, Van, and Bitlis) under the suzerainty of the Ottoman Empire."

Armenians of Van defending themselves against the Turkish
and Kurdish raids in 1915. The volunteers in their trenches.

The Turkish delegates, in order to persuade the Armenians to accept this proposal, informed them also that they (the Turks) had already won the co-operation of the Georgians and the Tartars, as well as the mountaineers of the northern Caucasus, and therefore the noncompliance of the Armenians under such circumstances would be very stupid and fraught with danger for them on both sides of the boundary between Turkey and Russia. In spite of these promises and threats, the executive committee of the Dashnaktzoutiun (Federation) informed the Turks that the Armenians could not accept the Turkish proposal, and on their behalf advised the Turks not to participate in the present war, which would be very disastrous to the Turks themselves. The Armenian members of this parley were the well-known publicist, Mr. E. Aknouni, the representative from Van, Mr. A. Vramian, and the director of the Armenian schools in the district of Erzeroum, Mr. Rostom. Of these Mr. Aknouni and Mr. Vramian were treacherously killed a few months later for their audacious refusal of the Turkish proposals, while Mr. Rostom luckily escaped the murderous plots against his life.

The bold retort of the Armenians to the Turkish proposal mentioned above, intensely angered the Turks, and from that very day the extermination of the Armenians was determined upon by the Turkish government. And in reality, arrests and persecutions within the Armenian vilayets began in the early part of September, 1914, a month and a half before the commencement of the Russo-Turkish war. The speed of the persecutions gained greater momentum as the months rolled by and tens of villages in different parts of Armenia were subjected to fire and sword. In the district of Van alone, during February and March of 1915, twenty-four villages were razed to their foundations and their populations put to the sword. Early in April of the same year, they attempted the massacre of the inhabitants of the city of Van as well, but the Armenians took up arms, and, guided by their brave leader, Aram, defended their lives and property for a whole month, until the Armenian volunteers from Erivan with Russian soldiers came to the rescue and saved them from the impending doom. This resistance on the part of the inhabitants of Van gave the Turkish government a pretext to deport in June and July of the same year the entire Armenian population of Turkish Armenia, with the pretended intention of transporting them to Mesopotamia, but with the actual determination to exterminate them. Out of the million and a half of Armenians deported, scarcely 400,000 to 500,000 reached the sandy deserts of Syria and Mesopotamia, and most of these were women, old men, and children, who were subjected in those desolate regions to the mortal pangs of famine. More than a million defenceless Armenians were murdered at the hands of Turkish soldiers and Turkish mobs. The gang of robbers, headed by Talaat and Enver, resorted to this fiendish means to eliminate the Armenian question once for all, because the Armenians had had the courage to oppose their Pan-Turanian policies. The barbarities of Jenghiz Khan and Tamerlane pale in comparison with the savageries which were perpetrated against the Turkish Armenians in the summer of 1915 during this wholesale massacre organized by the Turkish government. Mr. Morgenthau, who was the American ambassador at Constantinople during those frightful months, has proclaimed all these atrocities by his authentic pen to the civilized nations. This was the price which the Armenian people paid within the boundaries of Turkey for refusing to aid the Turco-German policies.

Now let us see what positive services from a military point of view this same martyred people rendered to the allied cause on both sides of the Turco-Russian boundary line.

Military Services Rendered by the Armenians
on the Caucasian Front

In order to have an adequate comprehension of the events which took place on the Caucasian front, it would be well to bear in mind that all the peoples of Trans-Caucasia, including the Armenians, felt great enmity toward the government of the Czar, whose treatment of them in the past had been very tyrannical and very brutal. For this very reason, the Turco-German propaganda had easily won the sympathy of nearly 3,000,000 Tartars and 2,000,000 Georgians. The dream of the Tartars was to join the Ottoman Turks and re-establish the old great Tartar Empire, which was to extend from Constantinople to Samarkant, including all the lands of the Caucasus and Trans-Caspia, while the Georgians, through their alliance with the Turco-Germans, hoped to regain their lost independence in the western Caucasus. Only the 2,000,000 Armenians of the Caucasus were not influenced by the Turco-German propaganda, although they hated the Russian despotism as much as their neighbors. But, on the other hand, having very close acquaintance with the psychology of the Turkish race and with their ulterior aspirations, the Armenians had the political wisdom and courage to put aside their petty quarrels with Russian Czarism and throw in their lot with the allied cause.

Armenian volunteers of the Caucasus taking the oath of allegiance administered
by the church dignitaries before leaving for the battlefield in October, 1914.

These were the circumstances under which the mobilization of 1914 took place in the Caucasus. The Armenian reservists, about 160,000 in number, gladly responded to the call, for the simple reason that they were to fight the arch enemy of their historic race. Besides the regular soldiers, nearly 20,000 volunteers expressed their readiness to take up arms against the Turks. The Georgians, on the other hand, answered the call very reluctantly, and the Armenian-Georgian relations were greatly strained from the very beginning. The attitude of the Armenians toward the despotic Russian government was incomprehensible to the Georgians, who thought that, because the Armenians sided with Russia,—the oppressor of all the Caucasian races,—they must be unfriendly to the Georgians. Many Georgian young men crossed the border from Batoum, went to Trebizond, and prepared bands of volunteers under the leadership of Prince Abashizé in order to aid the Turks. As to the Tartars, not being subject to call, they assumed the role of spectators on the one hand, and on the other used every means to arm themselves, impatiently awaiting the arrival of the Turks. The great land-owners of the provinces of Erivan, Elizavetpol, and Baku began to accumulate enormous stores, and prepare a huge reserve of sugar and wheat. The price of one rifle, which was 100 rubles ($50), rose to 1500 rubles ($750). Through Persia, the Germans took to the Caucasus great sums of money in order to push forward the task of arming the Tartars from the very first days of the war. Great numbers of young Tartars went to Persia and joined the Turkish armies. And all this was carried on in broad daylight under the very eyes of the short-sighted Russian bureaucracy.

The Russian administration of the Caucasus was more concerned with the Armenian "danger" and had no time to pay attention to the Georgians and the Tartars. Was it not a fact that officially no Georgian or Tartar question was placed on the diplomatic table, whereas the Armenian question was there? And for that very reason, before the commencement of the Russo-Turkish hostilities, the second and third army corps of the Caucasian army, the majority of which were Armenians, were transferred to the German front and were replaced by Russian army corps. Moreover, out of the 20,000 Armenian volunteers who responded to the call, only 7,000 were given arms; the authorities objected that they had no rifles ready, while a few months later the same administration distributed 24,000 rifles to the Kurds in Persia and in the district of Van. It is needless to say that all the Armenian officers and generals were transferred to the Western front; only one Armenian general was left as a specimen on the entire Caucasian front, General Nazarbekoff, and he was transferred to Persia, away from the Armenian border. Under these trying conditions commenced the Russo-Turkish war and the Armenian-Russian co-operation on the Caucasian front in the autumn of 1914. But, in spite of this suspicious and crafty attitude assumed by the Russian administration, the Armenian inhabitants of the Caucasus spared nothing in their power for the success of the Russian armies. In the three main unsuccessful Turkish offensives the battalions of Armenian volunteers played a great role. Let us now see just what took place during those offensives.

Keri Vartan Hamazasp

Commanders of Armenian volunteers; Keri, of the 4th battalion;
Hamazasp, of the 3rd battalion, and Vartan, of the
regiment of Ararat.

The first serious Turkish offensive took place in the beginning of December, 1914, when Enver Pasha attempted to reach Tiflis by shattering the right wing of the Russian army. The Turkish "Napoleon" was anxious to connect his name with that great victory which seemed certain to his puny brain. And with that very purpose in view he boarded Goeben, the German cruiser, and left Constantinople, amid great demonstrations. He reached Erzeroum in three days, thanks to the German automobiles which were ready for him at different stops between Trebizond and the frontier. The offensive was planned with great care, and had great chances of success if all the three wings of the Turkish army had reached their objectives on time. Enver had under his command three army corps—the ninth, the tenth, and the eleventh. The ninth army corps was to advance toward Ardahan by way of Olti and from there to march on Tiflis by way of Akhalkalag, when it should receive word that the tenth army corps had already captured Sarikamish and cut off the retreat of the Russian army of 60,000 men; while the eleventh army corps was to attack the centre of the Russian army near the frontier. The ninth army corps, in three days and without difficulty, reached Ardahan, where the local Moslem inhabitants assisted it in every possible way. The tenth army corps, during its march from Olti to Sarikamish, suffered a delay of twenty-four hours in the Barduz Pass, due to the heroic resistance of the fourth battalion of the Armenian volunteers which made up the Russian reserve. This delay of twenty-four hours enabled the Russians to concentrate a sufficient force around Sarikamish (which had been left entirely undefended) and thereby force back the ninth corps of the Turkish army. The Turks were so certain of the success of their plan that they had no transports with them and no extra supply of provisions. Opposite Sarikamish, where a battle was waged for three days and three nights, the Turks suffered a loss of 30,000 men, mostly due to cold rather than to the Russian arms. But if the Turkish army corps had reached Sarikamish twenty-four hours earlier, as was expected, it would have confronted only one battalion of Russian reserves, and that without artillery. This was the invaluable service rendered to the Russian army by the fourth battalion of the Armenian volunteers under the command of the matchless Keri. Six hundred Armenian veterans fell in the Barduz Pass, and at such a high price saved the 60,000 Russians from being taken prisoners by the Turks. This great service of the Armenians to the Russian army was announced at the time by Enver Pasha himself, when he returned to Constantinople immediately after his defeat. From that time on the government at Constantinople laid the blame of its defeat at the door of the Armenians, as a preliminary step in its preparation for the execution of its already-planned massacres of the Armenian people.

After their defeat at Sarikamish, the Turks attempted in April of 1915 to turn the extreme left wing of the Russian army by marching to Joulfa through Persia, and from there (in case of success) moving on to Baku, with the hope that the Tartar inhabitants of the eastern Caucasus would immediately join them and enable them to cut the only communicating line of railroad of the Russians, and thereby force the entire Russian army to retreat toward the northern Caucasus. The work of the intelligence department of the Turks was very well organized, especially as the Tartar and Georgian officers of the Caucasus rendered them invaluable services. The Turks knew very well that the Russians in Persia at that time had only one brigade of Russian troops under the command of the Armenian General Nazarbekoff and one battalion of Armenian volunteers scattered throughout Salmast and Urmia, while their own army was made up of one regular and well-drilled division of troops (sent especially from Constantinople) under the command of Khalil Bey and nearly 10,000 Kurds. Khalil Bey with his superior forces captured the city of Urmia in a few hours (taking prisoner nearly a thousand Russians) and victoriously marched on Salmast. Here took place one of the fiercest battles between the Armenians and the Turks. The first battalion of the Armenian volunteers, under the command of the veteran Andranik, strongly enforced in its trenches, repulsed the attacks of Khalil Bey for three days continuously, until the Russians, with the newly-arrived forces from the Caucasus, were able to put to flight the army of Khalil Bey. Thirty-six hundred Turkish soldiers lay dead before the Armenian trenches in the course of those three days.

In that very month of April, while Khalil Bey was confidently attempting, as we have seen, to surround the left wing of the Russian army in Persia, over in Van the Armenians had taken up arms in self-defence, and for one whole month were fighting another division of Turkish troops and thousands of Kurds until the first days of May, when three other battalions of Armenian volunteers, under the command of General Nikolaeff, came to the rescue, riding a distance of 250 kilometers (155 miles)—from Erivan to Van—in ten days. For one who is acquainted with the local conditions, it is an undisputed fact that if the Armenians of Van in April, 1915, by their heroic resistance had not kept busy that one division of regular Turkish troops and thousands of Kurds, and had made it possible for them to join the army of Khalil Bey, the Turks undoubtedly would have been able to crush the Russian forces in Persia and reach Baku in a few weeks, for the simple reason that from the banks of the Araxes to Baku the Russians had no forces at all, while the local Tartar inhabitants, armed and ready, were awaiting the coming of the Turks before rising en masse to join them. From the very beginning of the war, Baku has been the real objective of the Turks, just as Paris has been the objective of the Germans, and that for two reasons: first, as a fountain of wealth, the Turks knew very well that the Russian government received from the oil wells of Baku an annual income of more than 200,000,000 rubles ($100,000,000), a sum which is more than all the revenues of the bankrupt Turkish government put together, and they looked upon these financial resources as indispensable for the accomplishment of their plan of a Pan-Turanian Empire; second, because the very plan of their Pan-Turanism had been introduced in Constantinople after 1908 by these very Tartars of Baku. The commanders of the Turkish forces engaged in Persia and Van—Khalil and Jevded—understood very well why their plans failed in the month of April, 1915; and that failure is the explanation of those frightful massacres which took place on the plains of Bitlis and Moush in June of the same year, when the armies of the same Khalil and Jevded, defeated in Persia and Van, were forced to retreat under the pressure of the Armenian volunteers.

Andranik

The commander of the first battalion of Armenian Volunteers

The third Turkish offensive took place early in July, 1915. This time the Turks, with all their available forces—eleven divisions of regular troops, again under the command of Khalil Bey—attacked the very center of the Caucasian army. In a few days they re-occupied Malashkert, Toutakh, and the greater part of the plains of Alashkert. During one week the center of the Russian army retreated more than 100 kilometers (62 miles) leaving behind the district of Van entirely unprotected, and in danger of being surrounded at any moment. If the Turks had had one or two more divisions of troops at their service in those days, they would have been able very easily to take prisoners the entire fourth army of the Russian left wing and cut off their way of retreat. In order to escape from this dangerous situation, the Russian left wing was forced to retreat hastily toward the Russian frontier and sent a part of its forces to aid the central army. Only at the end of July did the Russian army, having received aid from its left wing, and under the leadership of the Armenian General Nazarbekoff, succeed in forcing back the Turks to their former line. These were the conditions under which nearly 150,000 Armenian inhabitants of the district of Van were compelled to leave all their property at the mercy of the enemy's fire and flee toward Erivan.