82. SIVAS: RECORD OF AN INTERVIEW GIVEN BY THE REFUGEE MURAD TO MR. A.S. SAFRASTIAN AT TIFLIS.
Once more the curtain drawn over the heinous details of Armenian massacres in Asia Minor is raised by that well-known fighter, Murad of Sivas, the Armenian leader of the province. Starting from Sharkishla, some twenty miles south-west of Sivas, with a small force, he opened his way to Divrig, lying about sixty miles south-east of Sivas; and after a great number of encounters with regular Turkish troops, he eventually entrenched himself on the heights of Yaldiz Dagh, north-east of Sivas, where, surrounded by large numbers of the enemy, he kept up desperate fighting for eight days. Most of his comrades were killed in this unequal combat. He himself, however, succeeded in breaking through the Turkish lines and emerged on the coast, somewhere near Samsoun. Here he forced some Turkish boatmen to set sail in the direction of Batoum. On the voyage, his boat was chased by Turkish motor launches and fired on, and in this encounter one of his comrades was killed by a bullet. He has just reached here to throw more light upon the horrors which have been committed in the Vilayet of Sivas and in parts of Harpout and Western Dersim.
For about twenty years Murad (a brother-in-arms of Andranik, the organiser of the present volunteer regiments) has been in the front ranks of the Armenian movement as a leading fighter, and the circumstances of his struggle since last March, and the story of his adventurous escape to Russia when all was over, would fill volumes. He has come to tell the outside world the news that, of 160,000 Armenians inhabiting the province of Sivas, there remain now, or, rather, remained a month ago, when he left, some 10,000, who have either been spared as useful artisans toiling in the labour battalions and the prisons, or were old people left in their homes. The remaining 150,000 souls have either been massacred outright or deported to the area bounded by the right bank of the Euphrates and Northern Mesopotamia.
The story which Murad gave me reveals once more the thorough organisation of these massacres by an overmastering hand, and the ruthless processes by which the details were carried out. Anybody listening to Murad, who had been cut off from the rest of the world for eight months, would at once have thought it to be the story of the massacres at Bitlis or one of the other places, there is such a striking resemblance of detail in the work of destruction.
The persecutions began with the outbreak of the Turkish war. The Armenians of Sivas did all they could to help the Red Crescent work of the Turkish army, either by personal service or contributions. Notwithstanding all these efforts, the Armenian element in particular was unscrupulously robbed under the cloak of military requisitions. In the meantime, the Turks of Sivas did not conceal their intention of settling old scores with the Armenians, who had applied to Europe for reforms.
The storm broke over the question of Armenian deserters from the Turkish army and the disarming of civilian Armenians. The Divisional Commander of Sivas had ordered that able-bodied men above thirty-three years of age and liable to service should get a permit from the military authorities for temporary exemption from entering the field; whereas Muamer Pasha, the Vali of Sivas, looked upon such a step as a sign of Armenian disloyalty. During December and January most Armenian soldiers in the Turkish service were either disarmed and sent to the labour battalions, or were imprisoned as ‘suspicious’ characters. The treatment they received in the army was of a most unenviable kind. A Holy War had been proclaimed by the Caliph, and the fate of the Infidels was in the Moslems’ hands. To mention an instance: on an unfounded charge of desertion six Armenians were hanged in Gurin, three of them being brothers, who were absolutely innocent.
For disarming the Armenians, the Turks employed the most fiendish methods. The order for delivering up all arms in the possession of civilians was nominally universal, but in fact it was directed against the Armenians. In Khourakhon, a village near Sivas, one man (Harutune) was actually shod like a horse, one (Muggerdich) was castrated, and another (Puzant) was done to death by putting a red-hot iron crown on his head. Under threats of such tortures many Armenians were compelled to buy arms and give them up to the authorities. The tragi-comical part of the whole business was that the Turkish officials entrusted with the mission of collecting arms were themselves selling them to Armenians at a good profit[[100]]. The object of these infamous proceedings seems to have been the wish of the Turkish Government to place the Armenians in the category of rebels, and accuse them of having hidden arms in spite of official warnings.
Then, again, with a view to striking terror among the Armenians, four or five of the leading men in every town or village were mysteriously shot, while most of the Government officials of Armenian nationality were dismissed without any reason. Nishan Effendi, the sub-governor of Kotchesur[[101]] (Province of Sivas), a man of good record, was peremptorily dismissed from his post with many others.
Towards the end of January last (1915), Odabashian Vartabed (the Armenian bishop-elect of Sivas) was proceeding to his post from Angora, when he was attacked on the way and killed in his carriage. It has now been proved beyond doubt that the plot was hatched with the cognisance of Muamer Pasha, the Governor, as among the murderers were Mahil Effendi of Zara, his aide-de-camp, Tcherkess Kior Kassim, his chief hangman, and two others.
During the course of February, Armenian soldiers on active service and Armenian bakers were accused by the authorities of having poisoned the soldiers’ bread and food. The subsequent medical inquiry instituted by Turkish and Greek doctors easily proved the baselessness of so gross a charge.
The billeting of Turkish soldiers upon Armenians throughout the province, and their uninterrupted movement from one front to the other[[102]], Sivas being on the main road between Angora and Erzeroum, caused indescribable suffering to the defenceless population. Like famished wolves, the Turkish soldiers ate up everything they saw, and took everything they could lay hands on. In Ketcheurd, an Armenian village east of Sivas, the women were horribly outraged by the soldiers, six of the best-looking of them being so atrociously treated that they succumbed before the very eyes of their tormentors; and this is only a typical example.
Another incident of a quite impersonal character greatly embittered the relations between the Armenians and the Turks. About 1,700 Russian prisoners of war, captured by the Turks in February, were brought to Sivas in a deplorable condition. The Russian soldiers of Moslem origin had already been released at Erzeroum, most of the Armenians had been killed, and the Russians were stripped of their clothing. On their way to Sivas they were grossly insulted, spat on by every Moslem passer-by, and whipped by their escort into quicker march. Half their number reached Sivas almost naked, covered with filthy rags, their feet swollen and in some cases with their sheepskin coats glued to their sore bodies. In face of such an outrageous treatment of these Russian prisoners, the Armenians of Sivas provided them with medical help and various comforts. This trivial manifestation of humane feeling displayed by the Armenians, however, caused great resentment among the Moslems. In spite of all such efforts, only some sixty Russians survived out of the contingent of 1,700 prisoners. The Turks picked quarrels with the Armenians when the latter tried to bury the Russian dead.
In the last days of March, Murad and other Armenian leaders were asked by the Vali of Sivas to attend a meeting for the deliberation of some important questions. Murad had, however, been privately informed by some Turkish friends that there was a plot against him and his comrades, so he very naturally failed to comply with the Vali’s request. The consequence of this was that the relatives of these men were subjected to shameful treatment at the hands of the Turks. Nevertheless, the Armenians throughout Sivas, Erzindjan, Harpout,
Tchemesh-Getzak and the other districts thought it wise to endure these persecutions, so as not to give any grounds for harsher measures. Fresh contingents of troops were sent to each village in April to collect an imaginary number of arms, and such arms were provided for the authorities in the manner already described. Courts-martial were set up in many places and people were summarily tried and sentenced. Hovhannes Poladian, Vahan Vartanian, Murad of Khourakhon and twelve other leaders were shot. Men belonging to the Dashnaktzoutioun and the Huntchak parties were subjected to 110 strokes each. These terrorising methods were carried out in thorough earnest in Oulash, Sharkishla, Kotchan, Gemerek, Gurin, Derenda, Divrig, and other districts.
More dreadful days for the Armenians began in June. On the assumption that every Armenian soldier was a deserter, and that his people at home had secreted numberless arms, the Turks never relaxed their policy of squeezing out of the Armenians every piastre they could get by employing the most brutal means. Towards the end of June and the beginning of July, massacres on a far vaster scale were carried out in various parts of the area referred to. The methods pursued in these massacres were precisely the same as everywhere else in Armenia. The men were separated from their women, and the latter driven in a south-easterly direction. The able-bodied men were first imprisoned and then massacred in small batches under blood-curdling circumstances. For the space of two weeks, Murad thinks, 5,000 Armenians were daily disposed of in the various districts of the province. At Maltepé, a village an hour’s ride east of Sivas, some twenty Armenian officials in the Government service were hacked to pieces with pointed and spiked hatchets. At Duzasar, another Armenian village near Sivas, 32 Armenians were done to death in the same manner.
At Habesh, near Zara, east of Sivas, 3,800 Armenians of the neighbourhood were poleaxed, stoned or bayoneted in a fiendish manner. In Khorsan, the headman of the village, named Nigoghos, was hanged upside down on the Boghaz bridge near the village. At Gotni, another village with 120 Armenian families, Turkish bashi-bazouks, mostly released convicts organised into “Chetti” bands, gloried in the achievement of having killed every male above twelve and outraged every woman above the same age.
At Herag, a village near Sivas, the men were killed, the young women carried away and about 600 children detained by the Vali, perhaps to be converted to Islam. The women of Malatia were stripped naked and driven out from their homes, amid the gibes and jeers of the Moslem rabble; many young women actually went mad, others resorted to hideously painful means to put an end to their lives. At Niksar, north of Sivas, most of the young women were distributed among the Turks, and the remainder were deported to the south.
During his wanderings Murad happened to see that only 300 children and old people were left in the town of Tchar-Shamba, near the coast, where there was a large, prosperous colony before. The young people of both sexes had been either killed, abducted or deported from their homes; no child above ten years of age remained among the survivors.
In the territory extending from Amasia, north-west of Sivas, to Erzindjan and Harpout, the Armenian element has been reduced to the same condition. In certain centres like Arabkir, Tchemesh-Getzak, etc., some families escaped persecution by adopting Islam.
About 15,000 Armenians of Erzindjan and the surrounding district were for the most part drowned in the Euphrates near the Kamakh gorge; the Armenians of Baibourt are also reported to have suffered the same fate in the river Kara-Su, a tributary of the Euphrates. With the exception of some thirty Armenian families at Samsoun, all Persian subjects, and a few other families spared here and there, Murad states that all along the Black Sea coast the industrious Armenian element has been uprooted from its homes and its property distributed among local or immigrant Moslems.
In the town of Sivas itself, which comprised some 25,000 Armenians, many of the important inhabitants have either been killed or deported to the deserts. There remain now some 120 Armenian families in the town, consisting mainly of children and elderly folk.
Amid this general scene of unopposed slaughter and destruction, however, there are brave deeds to record and stories of death faced heroically by both men and women.
The Armenians of Duzasar, Gavra, Khorsan, Khantzod, &c., all places in the Province of Sivas, made every possible sacrifice with a view to preventing an inter-racial outbreak in the early stages of the war; but when they were convinced that the attitude of passive resistance they had adopted did not avail in any way, they took up arms, and, supported by their compatriots of Gurin, Gemerek, Divrig, Ketch-Magara, Mandjaluk and other places, fought for days against the Moslem soldiers and bands and repaid the enemy in their own coin.
The Armenians of Shabin Kara-Hissar and Amasia, exasperated at the unaccountable savagery of the Turks, took to reprisals. They burnt down the Moslem quarters and the Government Buildings in their respective towns and temporarily drove the Turks from them. Later, however, they were overwhelmed by large Turkish forces, and died fighting to the last.
Sirpouhi and Santukht, two young women of Ketcheurd, a village east of Sivas, who were being led off to the harem by Turks, threw themselves into the river Halys, and were drowned with their infants in their arms. Mdlle. Sirpouhi, the nineteen-year-old daughter of Garabed Tufenkjian of Herag, a graduate of the American College of Marsovan, was offered the choice of saving herself by embracing Islam and marrying a Turk. Sirpouhi retorted that it was an outrage to murder her father and then make her a proposal of marriage. She would have nothing to do with a godless and a murderous people; whereupon she, and seventeen other Armenian girls who had refused conversion, were shamefully ill-treated and afterwards killed near Tchamli-Bel gorge.
The rich Shahinian family of Sivas, father, sons and one daughter, the fourteen-year-old Khanum, escaped the authorities, who wanted to capture them, and fought for four hours at the entrance of a narrow mountain pass against considerable odds. They were all killed, however, when they ran short of their cartridges.
I could prolong the story of these acts of desperate bravery on the one side and of murderous frenzy on the other. The grim reality of these horrible crimes was forcibly brought home to me when, in the course of my interview with Murad, some girls and young men, Armenians of Sivas, who were anxious to hear something of the dear ones they had left before the war, came to see Murad. They inquired about their relatives and friends, and Murad told them how and when they had been killed or deported. The percentage of murders, at any rate in the cases inquired into on this occasion, was much higher than that of the deportations. One of the girls present, on being told that everyone she had inquired about had been killed, was terribly overcome; yet she succeeded in suppressing her strong emotion, and nerved herself to take a solemn oath of remembrance, which was shared by all present.
X.
SANDJAK OF KAISARIA.
The Sandjak of Kaisaria is an outlying sub-division of the Vilayet of Angora. It lies under the shadow of the Erdjies Dagh (Mount Argaios), and bestrides the course of the Kizil Irmak immediately below Sivas.
We have comparatively little testimony concerning the occurrences in this district, but the documents contained in this section show in sufficient outline what happened at Kaisaria itself, as well as at Everek and K., the only other centres of importance.
83. KAISARIA: STATEMENT BY A TRAVELLER[[103]] FROM KAISARIA, PUBLISHED IN THE ARMENIAN JOURNAL “BALKANIAN MAMOUL,” OF ROUSTCHOUK.
The Armenians of the Kaisaria district, with the exception of Talas, have been deported. At the end of July the Government issued the following manifesto to the Armenians of Talas and Kaisaria:—
“(i) All the Armenians are to leave in batches of 1,000—the men, separated from the women, in one direction and the women in another.
“(ii) No one is to take with him more than 200 piastres (£1 13s. 4d.). If, after examination, anyone proves to have more than this, he will be brought before a Council of War.
“(iii) No one has the right to sell his property, etc.[[104]]”
After urgent petitions this latter condition was modified as follows:—
“Anyone who has no ready money is authorised to sell property up to a maximum of 300 piastres.”
Up till now more than 80 persons have been hanged at Kaisaria, including doctors and other notables such as Hampartsoum and Boyadjian Mourad of the Huntchakist Party.
The relations of the victims themselves were compelled to take down the corpses from the gallows.
Only the women and girls were permitted to go over to Islam. When the Governor was petitioned to allow the infants to be entrusted to charitable Moslem families, to save them from dying on the journey, he replied:—
“I will not leave here so much as the odour of the Armenians; go away into the deserts of Arabia and dump your Armenia there.”
[99]. Date unspecified.
[100]. See Docs. [68], [94], and [122].
[101]. Kotch Hissar.
[102]. As the Russian fleet had blockaded the Black Sea ports and transport by water was difficult, the Turks appear to have been using the Anatolian Railway to Angora, the terminus of the line, for their communications, proceeding thence to Erzeroum through Sivas by horse and camel.—[Note by the interviewer.]
[103]. Name withheld.
[104]. For other versions of the official proclamation see Doc. [120] and [Annexe C.] to the “Historical Summary.”
84. EVEREK: STATEMENT[[105]] PUBLISHED IN THE ARMENIAN JOURNAL “GOTCHNAG,” OF NEW YORK, 28th AUGUST, 1915.
At Everek a bomb explosion was the signal for a terrible persecution of the Armenians. The German who narrates this adds that the Governor of Everek was a good man, and was therefore relieved of his duties and replaced by a Circassian of violent character. There had been numerous arrests and atrocities in this district. After that, the wholesale deportations were begun.
[105]. Source unspecified.