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The Thirty-Year Genocide

Page 10

by Benny Morris


  murdered.71

  Surviving villa gers also told stories about Kurds and soldiers who showed

  mercy to women and children. But these incidents usually ended with the

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  deaths of those initially reprieved.72 Soldiers who refused to butcher the

  innocent were punished and chastened as infidels while their more willing

  comrades dispatched the victims.73

  All this murder came at the behest of the sultan himself, in an Islamist mes-

  sage delivered via the vali, Tahsin Pasha, who visited Mount Andok while the

  Armenians were still on the run. His secretary read the troops a firman from

  Abdülhamid ordering that “the disaffected villages that were supposed to be

  in rebellion were to be wiped out.” The troops and Kurds were “to spare no

  one or nothing . . . for their King and Prophet.”74

  After the stand at Mount Andok and the massacre at Ghelie San Ravine,

  troops moved on to Talori and nearby villages, which they destroyed while

  carry ing off anything valuable they could handle. Cecil Hallward, the British

  vice- consul in Van, later met survivors. Some told him that while Kurds there

  had taken cattle and sheep, they had generally refrained from participating in

  the massacres. One local Kurdish leader, Khishman Aga, was reportedly im-

  prisoned for “befriending the Armenians.” That said, Kurds reportedly also

  kidnapped “a number of [Armenian] girls.” One report put the number in the

  hundreds, with one Kurdish tribe, Bekiranli, taking 400 girls.75 The soldiers

  raped “many others.”76 Allen, the Van missionary, reported in 1895 that one

  local Kurdish chieftain, Hussein Pasha, had twenty Sason girls in his harem.

  Others were apparently in the hands of a Kurdish chieftain in the Jazira area.77

  In the second week of September, Zeki Pasha arrived and halted the mur-

  ders.78 Altogether, some thirty Armenian villages had been “wholly blotted

  out.” A missionary compared what had happened to the atrocities of 1877,

  in which Abdülhamid’s government was accused of slaughtering thousands

  of Bulgarian Christians.79 One estimate places the number of dead at 800 in

  Geligüzan, 2,200 in and around Talori, and 2,000 on Mt. Andok.80 In all, be-

  tween 3,000 and 6,000 Armenians were killed. At the time, Kurdish losses

  were estimated in the thousands, but the balance of forces suggests this

  was prob ably an exaggeration. The government claimed no losses among

  its troops, though later estimates put the number at 150–200. Hundreds of

  Kurds, Turks, and Armenians likely succumbed to cholera.81

  During and immediately after Sason, the authorities tried to prevent word

  of events there from leaking. The grand vizier told the British ambassador

  in Constantinople that “the Armenians had attacked Moslems” and “had

  The Massacres of 1894–1896

  desecrated their corpses.” 82 “No atrocities ever occurred or were ever

  proved,” the grand vizier told the American minister, Terrell. The terrible

  stories that filled the Western press were the concoctions of “Armenian anar-

  chists”; what occurred was an Armenian “revolution.” 83 For months, Amer-

  ican diplomats in Turkey were taken in by the deceit. Terrell telegraphed

  Washington that “reports in Armenian papers of Turkish atrocities at Talori

  are sensational and exaggerated. The killing was in a conflict between armed

  Armenians and Turkish soldiers” and was necessitated by Armenian “insur-

  rection.” 84 He believed that the clashes were initiated by Armenian revolution-

  aries. “Public opinion” in Eu rope was, he wrote, “deceived” by Armenian

  propaganda.85

  The Ottomans did their best to prevent Hallward from reaching the area

  to see for himself, arguing that the roads were unsafe and that the area was

  beset by cholera. (One missionary suggested that the outbreak was in part due

  to the “stench of carnage” floating in from the nearby mountains.86) Once

  Hallward reached Muş, policemen were stationed prominently outside his

  lodgings and “spies” followed him wherever he went.87 He speculated that

  the authorities hoped to keep him away from the affected districts until winter,

  when the roads would be impassable, and that the affair would blow over by

  the time he could get to the massacre sites. Fearing retribution, Armenians rou-

  tinely refused to meet him or tell him what had happened. The authorities

  also arrested leading Armenians, including six monks, and prevented busi-

  nessmen from other provinces reaching the area.88

  Ottoman officials pressed local Armenians to sign a mazbata, testimony expressing “satisfaction with [Abdülhamid’s] rule” and asserting that it was

  they who had “stirred matters up.” 89 Police arrested dozens of Armenians in

  Muş and Bitlis to intimidate the communities into silence, extort funds, and

  coerce them to write letters approving the government’s conduct and con-

  demning fellow Armenians. At least six prisoners died of torture and other ill

  treatment. According to a missionary, all, “with hardly a rag on them,” had

  been “put down . . . a damp filthy dungeon, half starved, often cruelly beaten.”

  The missionary suggested that the prisoners had suffered the usual fare of “po-

  liti cal prisoners” in Turkey: “flogging . . . the branding iron,” being made to

  “stand for several hours barefoot on the snow.” He noted with astonishment,

  “ There are actually those who have had tacks driven into their heads.” The

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  Turks claimed the prisoners died of cholera.90 By late 1895 twelve other pris-

  oners, from Talori, had died in Muş, and another was at death’s door. British

  repre sen ta tions only resulted in additional abuse of the prisoners.91

  In the winter of 1895, under pressure by the great powers, the government

  set up a commission of inquiry to investigate the massacre—or at least pretend

  to do so. Constantinople also ordered officials in the eastern provinces to

  restrain soldiers and Kurds: the great powers would be closely monitoring

  the work of the commission and, in general, goings on in the eastern prov-

  inces.92 One British report said that initially the government ordered Kurds

  in the Khouit district to resume anti- Armenian activities but then counter-

  manded the order, enjoining them “to keep the peace till the Commission

  shall get away.”93

  The commission set up shop in Muş.94 Attached to it, at the great powers’

  insistence, were three delegates representing Britain, France, and Rus sia. They

  watched the proceedings and reported to their ambassadors. Sometimes the

  delegates, individually or collectively, pressed the commission to take a cer-

  tain step or summon a par tic u lar witness. But the commission was free to re-

  ject such suggestions and often did.95

  Assisted by local officials, the commission spent the winter and spring of

  1895 framing the Armenians for their own slaughter by manipulating evi-

  dence, intimidating witnesses, and denying and manipulating testimony. In

  the estimation of Vice- Consul Hammond Smith Shipley, the British delegate,

  the commission’s efforts were “directed towards showing t
hat the Armenians

  were in a state of revolt and that they were guilty of atrocious outrages upon

  the Kurds.” The commission was intent on showing that Armenians “ were in

  every case the aggressors” and that “they were guilty of acts of revolting bar-

  barity.”96 On rare occasions the commissioners made a show of seeking out

  “pro- Armenian” witnesses.97 Meanwhile, in a largely successful effort to ex-

  punge physical traces of the massacres, soldiers dug the bodies from the

  trenches at Geligüzan and dispersed them in the snow.98 Though one dele-

  gate described the “smell” as “overpowering,” the commission found just one

  skeleton and, other wise, “fragments of human bones.”99

  According to Shipley, the delegates were “closely watched” and hampered.

  They were subjected to “insulting and violent conduct” by police and were

  forced to contend with “systematic persecution of their servants, guides and

  The Massacres of 1894–1896

  other Christians” who were “brought into any communication with them.”

  Authorities exercised “administrative pressure on an extensive scale” against

  “all persons suspected of their capacity or intention of giving damaging evi-

  dence.” The British even got hold of a letter from General Rahmi Pasha or-

  dering Hamidiyes in the Malazgirt district to make sure that “no one is to be

  allowed to visit Moush during the inquiry, for the purpose of laying com-

  plaints before the Commission.”100

  In cases where the murder of Armenians was undeniable, the authorities

  and commissioners tried to exonerate Turkish officials and soldiers and lay

  blame exclusively on the Kurds.101 One Armenian witness, Hebo of Shenik,

  claimed he had been “threatened with death by the chief of the Gendarmerie

  if he accused the regular troops and not the Kurds of massacring the Arme-

  nians.” Cooperation, on the other hand, would be lucrative. In exchange for

  testifying to the revolutionary commitments of those killed, and attributing

  “the burning of the villages to the Kurds” rather than Turkish regulars, the

  mutesarrif of Muş and the secretary of the commission promised to rebuild

  Hebo’s house; provide him “five hundred sheep, ten oxen and one thousand

  piasters”; and restore to him 160 liras taken from his brother Kriko, who was

  killed in the massacre.102

  The thirty- nine Kurdish chieftains who petitioned Queen Victoria were

  wise to this betrayal. They explained in their letter that the Turks had prodded

  them to attack and plunder and then blamed them for what had happened,

  even though much if not most of the killing had been carried out by regular

  soldiers. It was, the chieftains alleged, soldiers and gendarmes who carried

  out “the massacres, robberies, burning and other disgusting works that have

  taken place among the Sassoun Mountains . . . and they have laid every thing

  on the Kurds.”103

  In spite of the cover-up, details of what had happened gradually emerged

  from the investigations of diplomats and the foreign press.104 Operating from

  distant Russian- held Kars, a special correspondent for London’s Daily Tele-

  graph reported that he “and his assistants” had examined “over 200 persons who saw or took part in the massacre.” Among the interviewees were Turkish

  noncommissioned officers and “wild Kurds.” The Turkish witnesses, he

  wrote, “are often drunk, but the Kurds speak the truth soberly and fearlessly.”

  One Kurd described how “the Turkish soldiers took little children by the feet

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  and dashed them against stones.” The Kurd said he saw soldiers torture an

  Armenian priest, “squeezing his neck, gouging out his eyes, and tearing off

  his flesh with pincers.” The Kurd added, “We hate that; we only stab, or bay-

  onet, or cut off heads. We dislike needless pain.” He also claimed he “saw the

  soldiers . . . joking around” a pregnant woman and making “bets as to the sex

  of her child. She was then cut open and the money was paid to the scoundrel

  who had guessed rightly.” The report concluded that “the soldiers delighted

  in torture. They put some to death with scissors, cutting them and opening

  veins in the neck. Others were sawed, others had the tongues cut out, eyes

  gouged out, and several fin gers removed before death.”105

  The commission’s determination was that Sason had been the site of an

  Armenian rebellion. The Turks’ report and the delegates’ differed, Shipley

  said, like “night and day.”106 Graves complained of the commission’s bias,

  its failure to probe the 1893 Kurdish depredations that had led to Armenians’

  “isolated acts of hostility towards the Kurds and . . . insubordination towards Government officials,” which had triggered the “terrible reprisals” of 1894.

  Graves also decried the lack of Ottoman cooperation, which meant he was

  unable to assess the precise share of the “regular troops in the massacre.”107

  The acting British vice- consul in Diyarbekir, Thomas Boyajian, recognized

  Kurdish culpability, condemning in par tic u lar the “Sheikhs of Zilan and

  Dudan, Gendjo and Khalil of Sassoun, Eumer the chief of the Bekiran tribe,

  another chief of the Charabi tribe and the brother of [the Sheikh of Zilan],

  Molla Djami.”108 And Hallward denounced the Turkish explanations as “an

  extraordinary tissue of misstatements.”109 Ottoman officials, he said, knew that

  what had occurred were not “clashes” but massacres by Kurds and Turks.

  None of the Western diplomats bothered to translate the commission’s brief

  report for their own files.

  For their part, the British ruled that there was “reason to believe that the

  Bitlis Government had secretly encouraged the Kurds to pick a quarrel with

  the Armenians.” The Ottoman authorities “ were apparently driven by a desire

  to destroy the in de pen dence of the district” or, in an alternative phrasing, to break “the strength of the Sassoun Armenians.” Tahsin, the British concluded,

  also sought to extract money from Armenians and gain personal prestige as

  the suppressor of a revolt. Although there was no such revolt, he may have

  really believed that he was suppressing one.110

  The Massacres of 1894–1896

  Western observers initially hoped that the appointment of the commission

  might “modify” government and popu lar attitudes toward the Christian com-

  munities but were forced to admit that the opposite had happened. “A more

  than usually fanatical spirit is manifesting itself not only among the soldiers

  but among the Kurds and other Moslems,” Hallward wrote. Soldiers returning

  to Van from the massacres apparently told Armenian villa gers along the way

  that “their turn would come next if they remained Christian.” These soldiers,

  Hallward thought, seemed “to regard their proceedings at Sassoun in the light

  of a religious war.” The massacre would prove to be merely an “episode” in

  “the government’s general policy of suppressing the Christian ele ment in

  Kurdistan.”111

  The survivors were still suffering acutely a year after the massacres. One

  British diplomat believed that the authorities were continuing their effort “to

&
nbsp; consummate the ruin of the Christians of Sassoun and Talori” under “the

  guise of superintending” relief for the survivors, who were still living in abject poverty, without housing, food, or clothes.112 Kurdish nomads had returned

  to the pasturelands, where they continued “eating up the hay,” threatening

  the harvests, and demanding tribute.113 A letter from a missionary in Muş de-

  scribed the situation around Talori in 1895:

  At the beginning of spring oppression began at the hands of the nomad

  Kurds and others, and the villa gers then deci ded that it was best to re-

  turn to their former homes. There are about 860 of these house less wan-

  derers now living in the woods and mountains, in caves and hollow

  trees, half naked and some indeed entirely without covering for their na-

  kedness. Bread they have not tasted for months, and curdled milk they

  only dream of, living, as they do upon grass and the leaves of trees. There

  are two va ri e ties of grass which are preferred, but these are disap-

  pearing. . . . Living on such food, they have become sickly and their

  skin has turned yellow, their strength is gone, their bodies are swollen

  and fever is rife among them.

  The Kurds would shoot these unfortunates “on sight . . . so . . . they will

  gradually die out. . . . The authorities do not allow them to wander out and

  beg.”114

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  Survivors largely fled to unaffected villages or to Muş. But some remained

  in the Sason area, eventually emerging from forests and caves. And some who

  hid did not emerge. During a snowstorm in mid- March 1895, a Daily Tele-

  graph correspondent in Simal visited a house where two girls, aged six and fourteen, had lived on their own since the massacre. He found them “dead,

  curled up on a wisp of straw, in a corner of the room, with only a skirt apiece

  for clothing. They were close together. The room was cold as an ice- cellar,

  and there were no provisions whatsoever.”115

  The massacre— and the failure to punish the perpetrators— persuaded

  Muslims in the eastern provinces that “the Christians have been delivered

  into their hands to do with as they please.” So in spring 1895, local offi-

  cials allowed themselves to behave in “the most brutal manner, beating and

 

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