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.
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."