As war in itself is not far removed from being a wholesale, organized atrocity on a large scale, it is always advisable to accept such accusations with extreme reserve and to consider the probability of their having been perpetrated. In the case of Turk and Kurd versus Armenian, however—and unfortunately—there is little reason to doubt even the most gruesome stories that could possibly be written. It is a feud as old as the hills, and no historic battle field of the world was ever so liberally drenched with human blood as the soil of Armenia.
Having expelled the Turks from the Transcaucasian region toward the end of February, 1915, the Russians again moved forward on the Asiatic front, sweeping aside, destroying and capturing detachments of Turks that opposed their advance.
By March 1, 1915, the Russians were approaching Oltichai along one of the main highroads toward Erzerum from the west. Another column advancing from the east encountered some Turks in the mountain passes south of Alashkort. These they defeated, capturing two guns. On February 28, 1915, the Russian troops operating in the coast region occupied the port of Khopa on the Black Sea, eighteen miles southwest of Batum. This port was of great military value to the Turks.
On March 3, 1915, the Russian Army of the Caucasus, driving the Turkish forces before it, had reached the River Khopachas, the estuary of the Chorokh in Armenia. This move severed the route of Turkish reenforcements and supplies from Constantinople to the Caucasian frontier through Khlopa, Turkish Armenia, thereby isolating a big portion of Turkish territory. From Batum Russian troops advanced near the Turkish border, the Turks opposing them step by step. Russian warships from the Black Sea sprayed their shells over the shore and cleared a fifteen-mile strip of coast of Turkish barracks and troops, successively cutting off several lines of their communications by sea until, after a three days' battle, the last route was effectively closed. A number of Turkish coasting vessels, laden with ammunition and supplies, were also sunk.
According to an official Russian report issued on March 3, 1915, the number of Turkish prisoners who had passed through Pyatigorsk on their way to the interior of Russia (since Turkey entered the war) up to February 13, 1915, amounted to 527 officers and 49,000 men.
During February, 1915, the Turks had been nibbling at Egypt through the Sinai Peninsula. On the 25th of that month the allied squadrons had begun heavy firing on the Dardanelles. This decided the supreme Turkish war council early in March to recall most of the troops from Egypt and the Caucasus to defend the straits. By March 16, 1915, the Turks had lost so many important points in the Chorokh region that they completely abandoned to the Russians what positions they still held on the river.
On March 20, 1915, Petrograd announced that the Russian advance to the sea had deprived the enemy of all means of operating in the Transchorokh region or of transporting troops and munitions to Erzerum, and that the Turks had been put to flight near Olti. The road between Archava and Khopa, to the eastward, was strongly defended by the Turks in a series of stubbornly contested battles. The Russian advance created a panic throughout the Chorokh Valley; the inhabitants fled to the mountains, abandoning farms and villages. The mountain heights in the district of Ardanuch, however, were strongly fortified and still in Turkish possession. These fortifications had been built under German supervision, and the defense thereof was conducted by a German officer.
Hostilities were resumed in Persia during the last week in March, 1915, and on the 25th the Russians defeated the Turks in a violent, sanguinary battle at Atkutur, north of Bilman in northwestern Persia. The Turks were stated to have lost 12,000 in killed, wounded, and prisoners, as well as many guns. Preceding the Russian occupation of Salmac Plains in Azerbaijan province, northwest of Urumiah, hundreds of native Christians were rounded up by the Turks in the village of Haftdewan and massacred. Many of them were dragged out from the homes of friendly Mohammedans, who tried to hide them. The Russians on entering the village found 720 bodies, mostly naked and mutilated. The recovery of bodies from wells, pools, and ditches, and their interment kept 300 men busy for three days. The wailing of women intensified the horror of the scene. Surviving widows who were able to identify the bodies of their husbands insisted upon digging graves and burying the bodies. "Some of the victims had been shot. In other cases they were bound to ladders, and their heads, protruding through, were hacked off. Eyes were gouged out and limbs chopped off."
Messages from Urumiah confirmed earlier reports that more than 800 persons had already been killed in the neighborhood, and that more than 2,000 had died of disease.
A dispatch from Tiflis, Transcaucasia, dated April 24, 1915, stated that refugees who had reached the Russian line reported that the massacre of Armenians was being continued on an even greater scale. All the inhabitants of ten villages near Van were stated to have been killed. On being advised of massacres at Erzerum, Berjan, and Zeitun, and of the conditions at Van, the Katolikos, head of the Armenian Church at Etchmiadzin, near Erivan, cabled to President Wilson an appeal to the people of the United States to act on behalf of the Armenians.