The Thirty-Year Genocide

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The Thirty-Year Genocide Page 12

by Benny Morris


  excite the minds of the latter against the unsuspecting Christians. . . . The telegraphic circular . . . contributed largely to bring about the massacres. . . . The news . . . led to a distinct ebullition of fanatical feeling among the Moslems of

  [Urfa] while at Birejik they became fiercely excited against the former converts

  to Islam.”157

  The Massacres of 1894–1896

  The exact phrasing of these tele grams is unknown; no copies are accessible

  in Turkish archives. There is clearer evidence regarding the transmission of

  massacre orders lower down the chain of command. For example, in May 1896

  a British diplomat, Raphael Fontana, sent to his embassy the translated text

  of two signed statements by Kurdish agas from the Harput and Malatya areas.

  In the first, six agas swore that one Hadji Khalil Aga of Kizil Ushaghi (Kızıl

  Uşağı) had led 2,000 Kurds in a raid at Harput kaza on “the command of our

  Padishah”— a term denoting the sultan. In the second, an aga of the Kızılbaşı

  Kurds from the village of Bekir Uşağı, testified that Herirje Zade Abdüllah Aga,

  a member of Malatya’s administrative council, had “sent us a letter inviting

  us to attack the Malatia Armenians.” The aga and his men refused to partici-

  pate. Some days after the “disturbances” in the town, Herirje sent another

  official to the Kızılbaşı Kurds to “take back the letter,” which was returned.158

  Trabzon (Trebizond)

  A multiethnic seaside town inhabited by 20,000 Turks, 15,000 Greeks, and

  7,000 Armenians, Trabzon in the mid-1890s was ripe for an explosion.159 Turks

  in the area claimed they feared large- scale Armenian vio lence, though as one

  missionary put it, “it seems incredible that they could have been sincere in

  this.”160 “Rumors of massacres at Constantinople tended to aggravate matters,”

  Longworth reported.161 There was considerable homegrown instability,

  too. On October 2, 1895, Lieutenant General Bahri Pasha, the out going vali

  of Van, was nearly assassinated in Trabzon, on his way to Constantinople.

  Bahri had been walking with the Trabzon town commandant, Ahmed Hamdi

  Pasha, when both were lightly wounded by a gunman. The shooter was not

  caught, but the Turks charged two Armenian “accomplices.”162

  The situation escalated further on the night of October 4, when “large

  bands of armed Muslims from the neighboring villages,” intent on plunder,

  attacked Christian houses, firing guns and breaking in doors and win dows. A

  rumor then spread that Christians were massacring Turks—or, alternatively,

  that Armenians had assassinated the vali.163 A mob of “at least 3,000” mustered,

  “with knives, pistols and revolvers,” and rushed through the streets. Christians

  fled to consulates and public buildings. But the vali, Kadri Bey, and some

  Muslim notables intervened and troops were deployed. They arrested the

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  ring- leaders and “unmercifully beat” many of the “rowdies.” The crowd

  dispersed before any lives were lost. The next day, the local consuls—

  British, Rus sian, French, Belgian, Austrian, Greek, Persian, and Italian—

  ostentatiously rode in pro cession down the main street to government

  house. Their aim, Longworth explained, was to “calm the fears of the Chris-

  tians and strike fear in the hearts of the Turks!”164

  The Turks were not impressed. On October 8, at about eleven o’clock in the

  morning, the mayhem in Trabzon began “like a clap of thunder in a clear sky.”

  Turkish authorities later claimed that “it was impossible to determine on which

  side the brawl began” and that Armenians “from their shops and bazaars . . .

  indeed from anywhere and everywhere . . . fired at random on soldiers, police,

  zapties, and citizens alike” such that the “crowd which found itself in the square and the adjoining streets was obliged to respond.”165 But Western observers— not

  to mention Armenian witnesses—offered a different story: the Turks had

  initiated the massacre without provocation. According to an unsigned report,

  prob ably by an American missionary, Armenians were shot down in the street

  “or sitting quietly at their shop doors. . . .” Some were slashed with swords.

  The Turks “passed through the quarters . . . killing the men and large boys,

  generally permitting the women and younger children to live. For five hours this horrid work of human butchery went on.” The report continued:

  Every shop of an Armenian in the market was gutted and the victors . . .

  glutted themselves with the spoils. . . . So far as appearances went, the

  police and soldiers distinctly aided in this savage work. They were min-

  gled with the armed men and so far as we could see made not the least

  effort to check them. Apparently they took care to see that the right

  ones— that is, Armenians, were killed; also that an offer of surrender

  might be made to all that were found unarmed. To any found with arms

  no quarter was given, but large numbers were shot down without any

  proffer of this kind.

  In the eve ning, after a full day of murder and plunder, the vali and his troops

  stepped in and stopped the massacre.166

  The vio lence spilled over into the rural surround. The French consul in

  Erzurum noted, “The whole country between Trabzon and Erzerum is

  The Massacres of 1894–1896

  devastated. On the outskirts of Bayburt, he counted one hundred dead

  bodies lying together near the road. Nearly all the villages are burned and in

  many cases the male population is entirely wiped out.” The consul also re-

  ported the “ cattle and grain stolen.”167 According to Longworth, the attackers

  spared only communities that had “dressed as Moslems [and] professed

  their conversion to Islamism.” Much of the area had been “entirely depopu-

  lated,” at least temporarily.168

  Most of Trabzon’s Armenians escaped death by fleeing to consulates and

  public buildings guarded by troops. The town’s Greek inhabitants by and

  large refused shelter to the “hunted down” Armenians. Some 2,000 took

  refuge in the Catholic Freres’ Mission house.169 Several local Muslim officials

  also tried to help. The following March, the authorities arrested Essad Bey, a

  judge, apparently because he had assisted Armenians. “Honest, impartial, and

  tolerant,” the French ambassador wrote, “Essad Bey demonstrated the most

  laudable attitude during the October massacres. . . . Such a judge could not

  have found grace among the fanatical Muslims of Trabzon. They denounced

  him to the palace.”170

  The local branch of the Anglo- American Relief Committee carefully

  tabulated casualty figures: 298 Armenians were killed, along with another

  100 or so “wayfarers and strangers,” 9 Turks, and 3 Greeks. Another 200

  Armenians were killed in the surrounding villages, including 118 in Gümüşhane

  (Gumush Khaneh). Altogether 1,500 houses were looted and 320 burned.

  By February 1896, when the body counts were published, some 1,700

  Trabzon Armenians and more than 3,000 from the surrounding countryside

  had fled the empire.171

  Following the massacre the authorities rounded up some 400 Armenians,

  though all but 50 were rele
ased by early November.172 The authorities

  pressured Armenians to sign a declaration blaming the bloodshed on revolu-

  tionaries.173 By early November, “not one Turk” had been arrested. Turks

  and Greeks— under Muslim pressure— boycotted Armenian shops, adding

  to Armenian woes. The British consul described the Armenians as “virtually

  outcasts, bereft of their belongings, reduced to beggary and expelled from their

  hired houses.”174

  As with other massacres, the government sought to portray Armenians as

  aggressors who brought vio lence on themselves. Trabzon authorities claimed

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  the “disturbances” had started when an Armenian fired at soldiers after he

  had heard that his brother had been killed in Constantinople.175 They further

  claimed that, in the days and hours before the outbreak, Armenians had walked

  about town “armed to the teeth.”176 In late October, Cambon reported, “The

  Sublime Porte is . . . sending [circulars] to its representatives abroad, claiming that . . . Armenian armed bands are now burning Muslim villages, invading

  mosques and slaughtering Muslims.”177

  Yet foreign observers were not taken in; their condemnation of the Turks

  was swift and definitive. Even the Germans, who at this stage tended to jus-

  tify Ottoman policy, were appalled. Upon hearing of the events at Trabzon,

  the kaiser reportedly said, “This surpasses every thing before. This is indeed

  a St. Bartholomew’s massacre!”178 The British consul wrote that the Turkish

  mob at first shot down every Armenian they encountered; then, joined by sol-

  diers and later “Greeks and Persians,” the mob systematically looted Arme-

  nian “houses, shops and storerooms throughout the town,” killing anyone

  who resisted.179 Greeks, “possibly from fear, refused in the majority of cases

  to shelter the hunted down people in their shops and houses, schools and

  churches.”180

  Longworth considered the affair “well or ga nized.”181 Although the vali and

  the president of the criminal court opposed the massacre, the civilian and mili-

  tary authorities had “behaved disgracefully”; Longworth found “serious

  reasons to suspect that the slaughter was encouraged if not planned and

  ordered by some officials.” As he understood it, between October 2 and 8,

  the authorities had disarmed Armenians in the streets and in their houses

  while word of an impending massacre spread. Per the rumors, non- Armenian

  Christians “ were to be spared.” Longworth also reported that Bahri Pasha

  had been overheard on October 7 persuading Hamdi Pasha to allow a

  massacre. Hamdi then “unaccountably delayed his departure” for Constan-

  tinople. Moreover, bands of Muslims appeared to have been “armed and

  or ga nized” in advance and, on the eighth, the troops were ordered by their

  officers “to shoot at or towards Armenians in the square and in their houses.”

  The carnage only ceased when the vali himself declared that “the Sultan had

  pardoned the Armenians.” The looters spared Greeks, suggesting that they

  were instructed to assault only a par tic u lar set of Christians— Armenians.182

  Longworth assessed that the “government of the country is entirely to blame”

  The Massacres of 1894–1896

  and that the massacre was “more po liti cal than fanatical,” stemming less from

  religious fervor than from Turkish fears of Armenian rebelliousness and the

  pos si ble disintegration of the empire.183

  Perhaps the strongest evidence of organ ization came from a Mr. Cypreos,

  the Greek acting consul. Longworth wrote that Cypreos had witnessed part

  of the massacre. Based on his observations and information collected by his

  agents, Cypreos concluded that the vio lence at Trabzon constituted “a planned

  attack” on Armenians. He accused the troops of taking “a prominent part in

  the butchery,” which had commenced almost si mul ta neously in five diff er ent

  parts of town, triggered by a trumpet signal from a mosque minaret.184

  Maraş

  Hard on the heels of Trabzon, Armenians were massacred in some two dozen

  sites in eastern Anatolia.

  The carnage was especially great in Maraş. The town had a population of

  roughly 50,000, about one- third Armenian. They had long been subject to

  persecution and ethnic hatred. Sanders, the American missionary, reported

  in January 1895 that “suspicion and fear reign there supreme” and that the

  local military force was “more anti- Christian” than the civilian inhabitants.

  A key figure was the police chief, Shahan (Şahin?) Effendi, “one of the . . .

  bitterest haters of Christians, and especially Armenians.” A major prob lem,

  Sanders felt, was “the credulity of the Moslems.” They would “act at once on

  the wildest stories.” Maraş was therefore like “a loaded and cocked musket,”

  ready to go off. When it did, Sanders predicted, “not much of the Christian

  population would be left.”185

  The musket powder was fi nally lit on October 25. A Muslim had been killed

  in a fracas with Christians, provoking murderous rage. As news of Constan-

  tinople’s planned reforms spread, Turks killed dozens of Armenian men—at

  least twenty- five and as many as fifty—in the streets and surrounding fields.186

  Fearful for their lives, Armenians closed their shops, schools, and churches

  and “shut themselves up in their houses.”187 Prominent Armenians were

  arrested.188

  On November 18 a full- scale massacre erupted. The killing began in the

  town center and spread outward, as soldiers sealed off the roads into Maraş

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  to prevent escape. They set fires in three or four locations in town. An Amer-

  ican missionary reported that, at one of these sites, “the soldiers were drawn

  up in a line, and the bugle sounded, and they rushed to their work of plun-

  dering and murder.” Joined by a mob, the soldiers eventually entered the

  American missionary compound, which was on a hill overlooking the town.

  The Turks set fire to the theological seminary and looted the buildings. Some

  soldiers participated in the arson, but others tried to stanch the flames. “Arab

  soldiers, followed by a rabble of men, women and children” attacked Arme-

  nians and looted homes just outside the compound.189

  Missionaries who treated the wounded reported, “The work was fearful,

  children were disemboweled, men’s heads [ were] used as balls by the soldiers,

  or carried on pikes through the street.” Armenians were threatened with death

  unless they converted. One of the missionary school teachers was “flayed and

  cut to pieces.” “ Women and children took refuge in a church which was then

  burned to the ground.”190 All the Armenian churches were looted and van-

  dalized and a number of priests were tortured and killed. Hundreds who

  refused to convert were murdered.191 Dozens of Armenians were imprisoned,

  many severely tortured. But fifty were released just before a del e ga tion of diplomats was due to arrive.192 All told, the immediate death toll was around

  650, with more subsequently dying of wounds.193

  Locals and soldiers also attacked Armenian villages around Mara�
�, causing

  Armenians to abandon their orchards and vineyards.194 One missionary was

  reminded of “the Sioux massacre in Minnesota in 1862.”195 The greatest

  bloodletting appears to have taken place in Furnuz. The village had become

  a gathering point for refugees throughout the Maraş area. In mid- November

  troops surrounded Furnuz and slaughtered the men. One woman said that

  the soldiers took her two children “and threw them into a river.”

  Hundreds of survivors, all women and children, reached Maraş, pushed

  by Turkish troops “like a drove of cattle.” They arrived “sick and footsore,

  weeping and ragged, cold and hungry” and were imprisoned in a Protestant

  church. The authorities gave them bread rations and eventually allowed the

  town’s Christians also to send food: “Moslem women . . . came to jeer and

  laugh at the sufferers. . . . One morning such a crowd of Moslems gathered

  on the balcony of a house overlooking the church, to feast their eyes on the

  sight of the captives, that suddenly the balcony gave way and some 60 people

  The Massacres of 1894–1896

  fell into the street.” One died. “We trust,” a missionary wrote, “that some at

  least felt that this was a righ teous judgment.”196 Eventually the authorities set the captives in the church free and allowed the Maraş Christians to take them

  in. But dozens died of dysentery.197 Some Protestants were spared, but not

  all; of the Maraş area dead, about 250 were Protestants.198

  Conversion was one possible means of self- preservation. “In the district

  of Albistan all the Christians are reported to have saved their lives by em-

  bracing Islam,” the British consul reported. The story was diff er ent at Yenice

  Kale, where twelve monks and their superior, Padre Salvatore, were forced to

  leave for Maraş in chains, under Turkish escort. Along the way, they were given

  the option of converting. They refused and were “massacred, and their bodies

  burnt.”199

  The killing in and around Maraş proceeded “with all the appearances of a

  preconceived plan,” as one missionary put it.200 Barnham wrote to Currie that

  what had happened in Maraş was “evidently with the approval of [the] Gov-

  ernment.”201 Barnham later reported that on November 18 the mutesarrif was

 

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