by Benny Morris
was sending troops to Alexandretta.”333
On October 25 the kaymakam asked the Zeytunlis to lay down their arms,
arguing that the sultan had agreed to reforms. Aghasse was distrustful, and
the following day four gendarmes were killed near Fernuz, prob ably by armed
rebels. On the 27th the rebels attacked Muslim villa gers. A com pany of sol-
diers from Maraş then arrived in the area. The rebels laid siege to the Zeytun
garrison fort and cut its main water supply. They also surrounded the eighty-
man contingent at the konak (government building) inside the town and de-
manded its surrender. On October 30 Col o nel Iffet Bey surrendered the fort,
his battalion’s two mountain guns, and 370 Martini rifles, actions for which he
was later tried on charges of treason.334 The rebels freed many prisoners,
including Muslims. But the revolt, Barnham wrote, “had developed into a
racial war.” From nearby villages, Muslims fled to Maraş and Armenians to
Zeytun, which filled with 14,000 Christians fearing reprisal.335
The Turks reported the rebels were “8,000 strong.”336 In response the Turks
mobilized 15,000–20,000 troops, who were ordered to “utterly destroy the
city and raze it to the ground.”337 As they approached Zeytun, they attacked
Armenian villages along the way.338 One of these, Fernuz, was the main rebel
stronghold outside Zeytun. Eight hundred men died there, while the
women and children were driven off to Maraş.
The fall of Fernuz and the influx of Christian refugees carry ing tales of
Muslim atrocity provoked the Zeytunlis, who massacred the prisoners re-
maining in the konak. The killers, reportedly including “many women,” carried
out the slaughter with “hatchets, butchers’ knives and pickaxes.” A priest on
hand to witness testified that the killing lasted two hours; he said the victims’
“shrieks were appalling.” An Ottoman source indicates that 350 prisoners,
many of them Arab conscripts from Palestine, died. But fifty- seven were saved
when other Armenians intervened.339 Ulema and Muslim notables in Maraş
urged the sultan to punish the Zeytunlis, while a petition from Muslim
women alleged that Zeytunlis had “outraged” Muslim girls.340
Meanwhile, the Turkish columns, under the command of Mustafa Remzi
Pasha, the ferik of Acre, closed in. A tight siege began on December 18, and
the army recaptured the garrison fort on the 23rd. At first the Zeytunlis were
Abdülhamid
II
ready to parlay, but after a deputation of townspeople was “roughly handled”
by the army, robbed and briefly imprisoned, the Zeytunlis deci ded to fight
on. The Turkish forces, plagued by dysentery, failed to crush the rebels. But
they kept up the siege.341
At this point the great powers intervened. The consuls in Aleppo medi-
ated a truce, which took hold January 7, 1896, and sent a del e ga tion later that month to negotiate a more lasting accord. In the course of the talks, the Turks
demanded the surrender of weapons and rebel leaders. The Zeytunlis called
for “the constitution of an [autonomous] Armenian province” in the region
of what had been Cilicia, which would include their town. Barnham, who was
on hand for the negotiations, called the Armenian demands “extravagant pre-
tensions.”342 Through it all, food shortages, disease, and winter were taking a
toll on both sides.343 Barnham reported that “at least 140” Armenians were
dying daily.344
Barnham feared Turkish deceit: the consuls would engineer an Armenian
surrender and then the Zeytunlis would be massacred, “what ever the Turkish
authorities may promise.”345 Nonetheless, on February 11, the parties reached
agreement. The Zeytunlis freed the remaining Turkish prisoners and gave up
their rifles, while the Hunchak leaders were promised safe passage out of the
country and the refugees in Zeytun were allowed to move to Maraş. When the
consuls eventually entered Zeytun, they were met “with every expression of
delight and gratitude.” But, despite these cele brations and the agreement’s
“liberal” terms, Barnham worried about what would come next “The future
of Zeytun is likely to be a very stormy one,” he wrote after the conclusion of
the negotiations, “owing to the acute hostility of the Moslem population.”346
Barnham’s fears proved well- founded. During February and March, thou-
sands of refugees streamed out of Zeytun. One group, upon arriving in Maraş
“in great destitution,” was stoned and then beaten by a mob of townspeople
and soldiers. Girls were taken and raped. The authorities prevented mission-
aries from providing bedding and food.347 Owing to their poor treatment in
majority- Turkish towns, many of the refugees eventually returned to their dev-
astated villages.348
The Zeytunlis themselves suffered tragic consequences. Under the watchful
eyes of the consuls, the authorities more or less adhered to the terms of agree-
ment, which allowed the imprisoning of about seventy-five of the rebels but
The Massacres of 1894–1896
other wise barred retribution.349 But little was done to improve conditions for
the sick and hungry townspeople. A missionary noted at the end of March that
3,000–4,000 Zeytunlis were ill, chiefly with typhus and dysentery, and thou-
sands could barely walk. The town had just one doctor.350 Barnham concluded
that the residents “should be allowed to emigrate, . . . or they will be gradually exterminated.”351 Of course, this would not have been easy, either. Barnham
reported in March 1896 that a group of Zeytunlis travelling to Albistan with an
escort of gendarmes had been set upon by a mob. Nine were killed.352
Van
In the town of Van, there was “no special ill- feeling between the local Turks
and Armenians,” Hallward wrote in late 1894. But it served the administration’s
interest “to maintain the fiction of a perpetual Armenian agitation.” Locals
took “their cue” from officials who used “ every means to show that agitation
and disorder reign among the Armenians.” He quoted the commander of a
gendarmerie unit telling a “friendly” village priest that “he deserved death like
all other Armenians of this district as they were rebels against the Sultan.” In
Hallward’s estimation, though, “the Armenians of this province are and
have been for a long time past absolutely impassive in spite of the gross injustice which they suffer at the hands of the vali and his subordinates.” The Armenians could do nothing else, he concluded, as they were virtually unarmed.
Yet “upwards of fifty Armenians” were in prison “on absolutely unfounded
charges,” kept in jails that Hallward described as “a scandal to civilization.”
He concluded that “the spirit of the administration . . . is fanatical and hostile to all Christians.”353
Conditions outside the town, in the rest of Van vilayet, were no better.
Armenian lives and property in the Shattakh (Çatak) and Norduz districts,
south of Lake Van, were completely at the mercy of Kurdish brigands, who
were “actively encouraged by the vali.”354 Amid the prevailing atmosphere of
rapine and massacre in November 1895, raids grew more frequent and brutal.
The Kurds abducted children and stole “every thing down to the outer
garments of the men [and] women.”355 Robbery was often accompanied by
cold- blooded murder as well as the killing of any who resisted.356 Thou-
sands fled to Van town or took refuge in caves. Hallward related how one
Abdülhamid
II
woman “started for Van from a village about two and a half hours away with 3
small children. Finding that they could not keep up with her, she took one in
her arms and one on her back and left the third in hiding in a cave.” After
reaching Van with two of her children, she went back to the cave to fetch the
third but found him dead.357
Amid the despair, there were a few efforts to improve circumstances in Van
vilayet. After a new vali, Şemseddin Pasha, defended coerced mass conversions
with the paradoxical argument that Armenians were “incline[d] . . . naturally
to convert,” Constantinople ordered him to desist. “Group conversions will
lead our enemies to claim that the Muslims are converting the Christians by
force,” the Sublime Porte explained.358 And in the summer of 1895, following
complaints by diplomats, many po liti cal prisoners were released.359
But nothing really changed. Already in summer 1895 Graves was warning
of massacre. Kurdish raids on the villages augured gradual “starvation.”360 In
the town of Van, Armenian schools and shops were shuttered.361 The town
was “full of village women and children going about bare- footed in the snow
with the scantiest rags to cover them.” Zeki Pasha, commanding the 4th Army
Corps, gave “ambiguous orders” that seemed designed to ensure vio lence
against Armenians. For example, he ordered his troops to fire on Kurds when
attacked, though he knew full well that the real prob lem was army be hav ior
when Kurds attacked Armenians— not Turkish soldiers.362 Armenians began
smuggling in arms from Persia and perhaps Rus sia in order, they said, to
defend themselves.363 Yet another new vali, Nazim Pasha, threw up his hands,
telling Hallward he could “do nothing against the Kurds” and that Constan-
tinople needed to instruct the military commanders directly if it wanted the
Kurds curbed.364
Van town saw no massacre during the murderous days of October–
December 1895, prob ably because it was home to a relatively large number
of armed revolutionists and because of its relatively benign vali.365 But ten-
sions increased in the spring of 1896. According to British Vice- Consul
Major W. H. Williams, this was due “principally . . . to the succession of
outrages committed by the [Armenian] revolutionary party.” Revolution-
aries walked about Van “always armed and covered with belts of cartridges.”
Naturally, Williams wrote, “the Moslem population became excited.”366
Revolutionary “outrages” included an assault in late May, in which five or
six Kurds were killed.367
The Massacres of 1894–1896
Another source of friction was the rural refugee population in Van
town, which fled there to escape Kurdish marauders. The authorities,
townspeople, and missionaries all wanted the refugees to return to their vil-
lages, and eventually “over 500 persons . . . were sent on their way, on the
express assurance of safety.” But safety was more easily promised than pro-
cured. A missionary stationed outside Van described a scene in which “three
of these villages were surrounded, sacked . . . and the men shot down like
partridges. Twenty- five . . . were killed and many wounded.” She described
a “poor terrified remnant” brought to her office: “One little boy of ten was
standing before me, his clothes drenched with blood. I asked if he was
wounded, and they told me: ‘No, it was his father’s blood.’ The father and
son fled to a heap of straw and covered themselves. But the father, who was
lying over the boy, was discovered and killed, the boy lay there with his dead
father on him until the Kurds withdrew.”368 Troops sent to the area appar-
ently halted the Kurdish depredations but made no arrests. The troops
then settled down in the villages “ until they had eaten all the stray fowls and
other scanty edibles the Kurds had left.”369
In the town of Van, matters escalated on June 14, 1896, when a patrol ex-
changed fire with a group of men— either Muslim smugglers or Armenian rev-
olutionists— and two soldiers were wounded. The following day a column of
200 well- armed Hunchaks, led by one Martick, marched into town singing
the Armenian song “Our Country.”370 Anti- Armenian “disturbances” fol-
lowed, launched by “a mob of Turks, gypsies, and gendarmes.” Revolution-
aries later alleged that soldiers murdered a group of Armenian workmen in
the street.371 But most sources agree that the soldiers generally refrained from
attacking Armenians at the start of the affair.
The next day, June 16, Hunchaks clashed with Muslims and fired on
troops. Williams argued that the Hunchaks “ were no patriots trying to de-
fend their wives and children, but pure and simple rebels.” There were “600
or 700” Armenian fighters, armed with Rus sian rifles and led by a “Rus sian,”
a “Bulgarian,” and a dozen or so “naturalized” Rus sians and Americans. “I
have ample proof that they murdered in cold blood unarmed and inoffen-
sive Mahommedans,” he wrote. During the fighting, Armenian townspeople
fled their homes. Some holed up in the American mission compound, others in
vari ous locations around town. About 1,500 were initially saved by a Muslim,
Omar Aga, and his friends.372
Abdülhamid
II
Turks and Armenians traded shot and shell for a week, and Kurds from
outside joined the fray. On June 18 and 19, the army stepped up its involve-
ment, letting loose with artillery from the heights of Akerbok. About 15,000
Armenians fled to the missionary area. The revolutionaries beat back re-
peated assaults, killing some 250 Muslims. Eventually local Armenian leaders
and missionaries persuaded the Hunchaks to leave town and head to Persia.
On the eve ning of June 21 they complied, after Mayor Galip Pasha turned
out of his house several hundred Armenians to whom he had given shelter,
and “more than a hundred men and boys” were slaughtered. Thereafter, troops
and townspeople poured into Armenian neighborhoods, looting, torching,
and, here and there, killing. Meanwhile, the army gave chase and “cut to
pieces” the withdrawing revolutionaries. Of the hundreds of fighters who
fled, only thirty- eight managed to make it to Persia.373 According to Père De-
france, a French missionary, the revolutionaries massacred Kurdish villa-
gers as they made their way through the countryside.374
The following day soldiers restored order after Constantinople publicly
pardoned the Armenians. The Kurdish bands left town, here and there causing
havoc in the countryside, most prominently torching a large monastery. The
Armenians left the missionary buildings, which had come to resemble “pig
sties,” and dispersed to their homes. “Naked, starving and wounded” Arme-
&
nbsp; nians straggled into town from the surrounding villages.375
In the course of the week- long hostilities, 547 Armenians died in Van,
hundreds more in the flight to Persia, and thousands in the surrounding
villages.376 It was subsequently estimated that, altogether, 5,522 Armenians
lost their lives in Van and its villages. The following year, at least 5,000 more
died from disease and starvation, and 10,000 emigrated. In the kaza of Agants
alone, some 5,000 children were left without fathers, and about half that
number lost their mothers as well. At least 6,771, and perhaps as many as
10,000, converted.377
The Last Wave: The Ottoman Bank Affair
and the Massacre at Eğin
On August 26, 1896, Armenian revolutionaries attacked the Imperial Ottoman
Bank in Galata, a neighborhood of downtown Constantinople. Two dozen
The Massacres of 1894–1896
fighters, led by the revolutionaries Papken Siuni and Armen Garo, rushed into
the bank, killed guards, and took about a hundred hostages, many of them British,
Greek, and French nationals.378 Several Turks were killed in exchanges of fire.
The plotters apparently aimed to seize several key institutions besides the
bank. They attempted but failed to take the Armenian Patriarchate and the
Credit Lyonnais bank. They did, for a time, occupy a number of buildings
near Hagia Sofia and in Galata, from which they threw bombs onto the streets
below.
The purpose of the raid, as Terrell put it, was “to attract the attention of
Eu rope, and force intervention for the Armenian race.” The Armenians hoped
“to rouse the Powers to secure . . . better government” by reviving the mooted
reforms or by securing Armenian “autonomy.”379 More broadly, the raiders
appear to have been motivated by a desire “to save their fellow countrymen
from oppression and wrong” and to stir rebelliousness among “lower class”
Armenians who, until then, “ were . . . holding aloof ” from the strug gle. After interviewing the raiders, a British diplomat described them as filled with
“hatred” for the Turks “beyond all description.”380
The Ottoman leadership responded harshly to this deliberate challenge in
the very heart of imperial power. The public did too. Muslim mobs, sometimes