13. STATEMENT MADE BY A FOREIGN RESIDENT AT CONSTANTINOPLE TO A SWISS GENTLEMAN AT GENEVA; COMMUNICATED BY THE LATTER.
When I left Turkey early in March (1916), the Armenian situation was as follows:—
In general deportations had ceased, but local interference with Armenians continued. Quite often Armenians who had remained in the villages or cities between the Taurus Mountains and Constantinople have been sent from one locality to another within the province, or even to localities in other provinces.
Arrests of Armenians in the Capital continue with considerable frequency. Those arrested were usually sent to some interior province, often to be killed or to be left to die from ill-treatment or lack of food.
Extortion of money and supplies from Armenians, and discriminations against them in the distribution of bread and other food supplies, continue out of all proportion to these practices as applied to other Ottoman subjects.
The suffering of all Armenians, and especially of those in exile, is very great, and many are dying from lack of proper food and from disease. Anti-Armenian feeling among Moslems is increasing.
Early in January of this year, trustworthy reports from Aleppo gave 492,000 as the number of deported Armenians who were at that time in the regions of Mosul, Der-el-Zor, Aleppo and Damascus[[28]]. Most of these are women and children and old men, practically all of whom are in great need of food and other necessities of life. Without physicians and medicine, disease is reaping a rich harvest from these exiles.
The Turkish Minister of the Interior has stated that about 800,000 Armenians have been deported, and that about 300,000 of these people have been killed or have perished from other causes. Other estimates place the number of deported at 1,200,000, and the number who have perished from all causes at 500,000.