109. Q.: REPORT FROM DR. D., DATED Q., 8th SEPTEMBER, 1915; COMMUNICATED BY THE AMERICAN COMMITTEE FOR ARMENIAN AND SYRIAN RELIEF.
The conditions are so bewildering here that it is hard to know how to present a general view of the situation. The deportation is still going on in full force, and yet shows unaccountable stoppages and delays. I suppose that the vis a tergo emptying out the population is so out of proportion to the executive ability to keep the channels of travel open that the result is this great damming back of the current that has filled the cities from Eski Shehr to the Taurus mountains. Beyond that I know very little. Exemptions and delays are granted with no apparent reason, often, however, with the plainest of reasons, viz., the enriching of the police. The amount of extortion practised must extend into thousands of liras.
Dr. E. will tell you of what he has seen on the way here. I will try not to duplicate what he says. The information that I have from P. is reliable. The Protestants of Q. who were there have all returned here, though many difficulties were thrown in their way. There were about 15,000 exiles in P., but there has been a steady stream pouring in that direction and the number must be larger now, except for the number sent on into the mountains from there. How many there are at Bozanti, the terminus of the railway, I have not been able to learn. Whether they are now being sent on to Tarsus and Adana, I cannot learn with certainty. Reports have it that travel beyond Adana is cut off, and so the exiles are not being sent, as before, beyond Aleppo.
In P. the exiles are encamped in the open fields in the neighbourhood of the railway station. No protection is provided for them, and they have none, except such tenting as they can make up for themselves out of carpets, coarse matting, cloaks, gummy sacks, sheets, cotton cloth, tablecloths, or handkerchiefs, all of which I have seen used here in Q. There are no sanitary arrangements for this horde, and every available spot is used for depositing excrement. The stench of the region is described as appalling. Here in Q. I have seen how the adjoining field, entirely open as it was, was so thickly covered with excrement that it seemed impossible to step anywhere, while women and girls, as well as others, were defecating there in the daytime simply because there was absolutely no screen or protection anywhere. When it is considered that diarrhœa and dysentery are rife, you can imagine the results. The region there, as well as here, is exceedingly malarial, and this is the time of year for it. I have no knowledge of how many deaths have taken place.
After a time, large numbers of the exiles at P. were allowed to find shelter in the town, where they rented houses and for a time were better off. But they were not allowed to rest in quiet. Suddenly the order would come from the police that all were to leave for Bozanti, and the whole number who were in the town, perhaps 5,000, would be driven (and I mean literally driven under the lash) into the streets with all their goods and be rushed to the encampment. There perhaps 100 wagons would be ready and 500 people find places and be sent off. The rest were then left to stay in the encampment or bribe their way back to the town again and re-rent their houses, until another alarm and driving forth. Every such onslaught meant several medjids of expense for every family for transporting their goods and bedding to and fro, and this in addition to the bribes paid to the police for the privilege of going back to the town. Such bakshishes had to be paid to the police for every favour asked, from medjids[[147]] to liras.[[148]] No one could go to present a petition to the Governor without bribing the police first. In the encampment the police would come along in the morning and order all tents in a certain section to be taken down, saying they were to start for Bozanti, and this order would be enforced instantly with scourge and club. The terror of the people, from the reports they had of that journey “beyond”—of pillage, murder, outrage, stealing of girls and starvation—was such that they were always ready to purchase a few days’ respite if they had any money to do it with. No train or wagon is ready, so when enough money is brought out, the people are graciously allowed to put up their tents again twenty feet away from their former site. The sick, the aged—none were respected. The people have described to me the terror of that constantly recurring order, “Down with the tents!” with the whip behind it.
For those who did have to start, the conditions were still worse. They must hire wagons brought there for them, and the drivers charge four times the ordinary price. It must be paid, or they will be driven out to go on foot, and, of course, in that case, can take no bedding and hardly any food with them. The drivers acknowledge afterwards that the police take one half of the price paid. It is impossible for me to tell you all the means of extortion employed. I know of a family here who had to pay nineteen liras to hire a wagon and hamals and get permission from the police to move from the filthy encampment to a small, horribly crowded hotel near by. The hotel-keepers charge a lira a day for a little room with three or four dirty beds in it, and then share this with the police.
Protestants are supposed to be freed. The story of my contest with the officials here, before the Vali arrived, shows how they had planned to get all sent away before his arrival by concealing the order for exemption.
The Protestants who were already in P. were notified that they were free, yet had to pay fifty liras to the police to get their permit to leave. At the station, where they went to get third-class tickets, they were told that there were no third-class coaches left and that they must take second-class. After purchasing these tickets two-thirds of them were put into third-class coaches after all. It was merely a trick to separate them from more of their money. Of course, they were glad to have third-class coaches, for, coming here first, the exiles were compelled to pay the full fare and then packed forty or fifty together in box-trucks, cattle-trucks, or even open flat trucks. The Railway seems to be as conscienceless in wringing the money out of them as the Government or the Turks.
The whip and club are in constant use by the police, and that upon women and children too. Think what it is for people, many of them cultivated, educated, refined, to be driven about in this way like dogs by brutes. I have seen women black and blue from the beating they have received. A woman with a fractured thigh at the station was being helped by friends intending to bring her to the hospital. A commissary of police came along and ordered her to be dragged back into the carriage. A boy yesterday in the encampment here was struck on the head by a policeman and killed. The pastor of the church at O. was beaten with a whip and his forehead cut open, in a great gash, by a blow from a club, for saying that he was a Protestant and asking for his freedom. He is not freed yet in P. Two of his daughters we took into the hospital as nurses when the family first passed through here.
Dr. E. will tell you of conditions here in Q. The Vali is a good man, but almost powerless. The Ittihad Committee and the Salonika Clique rule all. The Chief of Police seems to be the real head. The Vali came here on the promise that Q. should be spared. Then he was delayed in Constantinople day after day until the deportation here should be accomplished. He was furious when he heard of it on his way here, and he is likely to resign soon. I am telling you what a close friend of his, a travelling companion, told me.
The Armenians of N. sent here were forced to come by wagon. The Circassians of the region knew of it and followed after and robbed them, and shot one girl. Gendarmes were sent out after the Circassians, but only took their turn in completing the stripping of the party.
Another party was sent in the same way and was attacked at night by Circassians, and one of the men was shot through the thigh—a horrible wound. He died here in the hospital a few hours later. We have one boy and one girl here in the hospital who were run over by trains, compelling the amputation of the leg. Three hundred families from Baghtchedjik are in Eski Shehr. About two hundred of the men were in market, nearly a mile from the encampment, when the police came on them and drove them out at once to start on foot for Q., without letting them go back to their families or get money. They are here now, begging me to try to communicate with their families. The mail is closed to all such communications. Telegrams innumerable are given in at the office, the money received and then the telegram never sent—(witness two long telegrams I sent you).
During the last four days the inhabitants of the villages above Baghtchedjik have been poured in here, and are filling the encampment. They come from a cool and well-watered region. They are thrown out here in this burning heat, without shelter and with a water supply so scanty that there is a constant struggle at the fountain to get their jars filled. The sickness that we are seeing among them is heart-rending. Many are simply overcome with the heat. Our dispensary floor is covered all day with sick in all stages. A little girl died here this morning. Others, moribund, will perhaps hardly get back to their tents. We are trying to refresh them with yoghourt and water-melons. They are too sick to take bread.
Hardly anything makes me so hot as the thought of the soldiers’ families. The men—the fathers, brothers, sons and husbands—are serving in the Turkish Army as loyally as any, and their families—their children, wives and sisters—are driven off in this inhuman manner. Soldiers’ families are also said to be exempt from deportation, but in countless cases they are swept away with the rest. The wife must put in a special petition claiming her relationship. This petition has to be paid for, for she cannot write Osmanli. It must be stamped with the regular stamp, the additional stamp, the Hidjaz Railway stamp and the War-Aid stamp. Then, after the usual delays of “Go and come again,” a telegram is written to the Army Post where she says the soldier is, and this she must pay for—thirty to sixty piastres[[149]]—and all this when she and the children are hungry for bread with no money to buy it. A woman came for treatment yesterday with three children, two almost dying. She happened to mention that she was a soldier’s wife. I asked why she did not get free by that. “They wanted thirty-one piastres for the telegram and I had nothing,” was her reply. Oh! I wish you could see the abominable cruelty of their treatment and the diabolical ingenuity of the ways devised to strip them of all their money before bringing them to their deaths—for that is where it will surely end for all these people, unless some means of stopping it is soon found. Whether the taking of Constantinople will be such a means or not will depend, I suppose, on whether the present Government succeeds in making its escape and continuing its rule in the interior.
An “Exiles’ Commission” has come here from Constantinople. It was announced that their business was to be to settle the exiles in this vilayet and not make them go further. Telegrams from Enver Pasha were received stating this before the Commission came. Now they have come, and it appears that their duty is merely to clear the choked channels and speed up the traffic. They have announced that they have come not to settle the exiles but to drive them on. Since beginning this letter I have learned that the stream has begun to flow again from P. and Bozanti to Adana and on, and it is reported that now the destination is Arabia.
I must add a report from Angora, whence I have received to-night what I have every reason to believe to be an accurate account. Some two or three weeks ago, about two hundred of the chief Armenians at Angora were imprisoned, then taken at night in wagons, thirty or forty at a time, to the banks of the Kizil Irmak, and there killed. Eighteen of the employees of the Railway and the director of the Ottoman Bank were among these. I had this on good authority then, and it is confirmed now. Within this past week all the Armenian men, whether Gregorian, Protestant or Catholic, have been taken, stripped to shirt and drawers, tied together and taken away and heard of no more. The women and girls have been distributed to the Turkish villages, the Turks coming and looking over the girls and choosing what they wanted. I could give you the name of one of the wealthiest men in Angora, whose wife and three daughters were taken away before his eyes, and who went crazy. Three hundred boys were circumcised. The name of the railway official was told me who saw one hundred of these done, and reported it. The region from Angora to Polatlu (on the railway) is said to have been the scene of such outrages as cannot be described. It is reported that this complete extermination applies to the whole of the Angora Vilayet outside the Kaisaria Sandjak, but my accurate information does not cover this.
It is openly stated by officials here that the exemption of Protestants and Catholics is only temporary, and the trend of events seems to me to give colour to this.
The saddest part of all this is our utter impotence to do anything to stay the awful deeds that are being perpetrated.
[147]. About 3s. 2d.
[148]. Slightly less than a pound sterling.
[149]. Five to ten shillings.