by Benny Morris
Lak
Va
100
Sason
8-9/94
zurum
10/95
0
Er
ir
t
ir
ybur
11/95
10/95
11/95
n
Ba
Arabk
Diyarbek
Euphrates
bzo
k
10/95
Harput
11/95
Tra
re
10/95
zincan 10/95
n
ve
11/95
fa
Er
e
9/96
S
Ur 10-12/95
Egi
Gumushane
ay
ecik
alat
11/95
1/96
M
Bir
11/95
diyaman
Antep 11/95
t
A
ak
Sivas
11/95
Aleppo
To 3/95
eytunZ 10-12/95
Gurun 11/95
sra
Amasya 11/95
Ma
on
10-11/95
Zile 11/95
rzif
seri
ea
e 11/95
y
M
aK 11/95
zgato 2/94
Y
raa
Black S
Ank
1894–1896
icosiaN
isehir
e
10/95
Esk
and Resistance,
ea
esistanc
Istanbul 8/95, 10/95
ed r
anean S
ganiz
Or
e of Armenians,
e
GARIA
Mediterr
assacrM
BUL
Sites of Massacr
Abdülhamid
II
plotters, “fanatical and unprincipled men,” including Nuri Bey, the mayor.
Jewett further reported that the vali had angrily declared, “I will outrage the
mother of these giaours or they will outrage mine.” In other words, as Jewett put it, “I will crush and ruin these infidels or be ruined by them.” He also reported
“a similar plot at Cesarea [Kayseri].” Back in Sivas, Jewett observed Turks
walking the streets “heavi ly armed.” The garrison had received “new arms and
ammunition,” and gendarmes were going about with “two belts full of car-
tridges,” contrary to “the usual custom,” apparently of one cartridge belt.29
Sason
The injustice in Yozgat had largely been perpetrated by Turkish officials and
soldiers; in Sason, in Bitlis vilayet, local tribes joined in. Together these Muslims perpetrated the first large- scale massacre of Anatolian Christians
during the 1894–1896 period.
According to Currie, Sason was “wild and mountainous,” “poor,” and “the
worst- governed” in de pen dent district in the empire. The Armenians lived
under the thumb of a Kurdish majority who “exercise a sort of feudal au-
thority.” Armenian villa gers, “their vassals,” paid an annual tribute to the
Kurds, above and beyond the taxes they owed, and often paid, to the govern-
ment. Though oppressed, the local Armenians were a proud people, “fierce
and warlike” and “hardly distinguishable from their Kurdish neighbours.”30
An American missionary considered these Armenians “an exceptionally hardy,
brave set.”31
Armenian- Kurdish relations in the Sason area were often described as am-
icable.32 After the massacre in Sason was over, a Kurdish chieftain lamented
the loss of “love and perfect confidence” that had prevailed “for hundreds of
years between us and the Christians.” In a petition to the great powers, he
wrote of a kind of paternalistic bond. “Peace and safety existed among us, so
that though each one of us owned a Christian, and every year exacted a fixed
amount for protection afforded, yet we cared for them more than [for] our own
children, and if they suffered oppression and injustice from any one, we would
labor for them to the extent of sacrificing our very life for the love of them,
and this cannot be denied.”33
The Massacres of 1894–1896
Armenians, however, did not see the situation as idyllic. One testified that
Ottoman policy seemed geared toward “extermination, persecuting us in all
sorts of ways and continually inciting neighboring Kurdish tribes against us.
Taxes were arbitrarily raised to a most exorbitant rate and levied in a most
tyrannical fashion.” He added, “Besides, we had to pay tribute (in kind) to
some seven diff er ent Kurd ‘Ashirs,’ or chieftains . . . and at the same time
were continually exposed to their plunder, rape and murder.”34 The levies
worsened with the arrival of additional tribes from Persia and Kurdistan. In
the early 1890s, some villages, including Talori (Dalvoreeg or Talvori) and its
satellites, refused to pay the government taxes, arguing that they could not
afford the multiple charges and that the government was failing to carry out
the basic task of providing security against marauders. Local officials desig-
nated this be hav ior subversive.35
What ever the historical relations between Sason’s Armenians and the local
tribes, during the two years leading up to the massacre, matters there had
grown worse. Fearful of rebellion, troops and gendarmes had placed the area
under a virtual “siege,” preventing “intercourse with neighboring towns.” An
Armenian explained, “Our elders were constantly arrested, imprisoned and
tortured and life was made generally unbearable— all under pretense of our
being revolutionists.” In summer 1893, after a severe two- year famine and after paying tribute to two local tribes and taxes to the government, the situation
became “insupportable” when Kurdish tribes from Diyarbekir, the Badikanli
and Bekiranli, entered the town and demanded additional tribute. When the
Armenians refused, the Kurds raided nearby villages.36 Armenians then
mounted counter- raids.37 At Talori, villa gers fired at a nearby Kurdish encamp-
ment; the Kurds responded by sacking the village and driving the villa gers to
the nearby hills.38 The government sent reinforcements, ostensibly to pro-
tect the villa gers, but proceeded to arrest and torture Armenian notables,
charging them with sedition. The soldiers’ horses ate what little grain was
available. In nearby Simal, Turks “hung Azo,” a local Armenian notable, “by
the feet from the ceiling . . . and literally covered his body, face, forehead and tongue with cruciform scars made with a red- hot iron.” The villa gers told
Tahsin Pasha, the vali, that they could pay no further taxes unless he pro-
tected them from the Kurds. He instead demanded that they surrender their
Abdülhamid
II
weapons. They refused, “having no faith in the promises of the [Otto-
mans].”39 Thus matters stood at the end of 1893.40
As the state became more suspicious, it turned to arresting alleged rabble
rousers who had c
ome to Sason. In 1894 officials detained two outsiders.
One, Mihran Daghmatian, called on the villa gers to stand up for their rights
and demand that Constantinople put an end to local misgovernment and
Kurdish depredations. The other, Harmpartsoon Boagian, was a physician
trained in Constantinople, Athens, and Geneva, who tried to teach Arme-
nian villa gers “not to sell their daughters in marriage” and to stand up to the
Kurds.
But while outside agitators did play some role in Sason, con temporary re-
ports suggest that the “desperate” villa gers were poorly armed and had not
rebelled.41 Indeed, it is clear from the evidence that the massacres that took
place in Sason in August– September 1894 came in response to Armenian re-
sis tance to Turkish and Kurdish aggression; they were not a Turkish effort—
even an overblown one—to stave off insurrection.42
The immediate prelude to massacre came in July, when officials in nearby
Muş, the seat of the district, were said to have “commissioned” a tribal leader,
Sheikh Mehemet, to muster near Talori “large numbers” from the Diyarbekir
region. A group of Kurds camped near Simal. Then, in August, the vali
reportedly urged or ordered the tribesmen to attack.43 The orders likely origi-
nated with Süreyya Bey, first secretary to Sultan Abdülhamid II, who sent
explicit instructions to the army’s commander in chief to “neutralize all ban-
dits by force, no quarter to be given.” This was interpreted by the Sason au-
thorities as a license to kill.44 Ottoman Army correspondence clarifies that the
orders were to kill the men and spare women and children.45 From Erzurum,
Graves reported “I learn privately that the Ferik [lieutenant general], Edhem
Pasha, while at Muş received tele grams from Zeki Pasha ordering the slaughter
of Sason Armenians which he refused to obey. The execution of these orders
then devolved upon [Col o nel] Tewfik Bey.” 46 Armenian witnesses testified
that the Kurds were “saying among themselves” that they had received orders
from the Ottoman authorities “to exterminate the Armenians.” 47
In a post- massacre petition to the queen of England, thirty- nine local
Kurdish chieftains, including leaders of the principal tribes engaged in the vio-
lence, also blamed Turkish officials. The chieftains wrote that Turkish officials
The Massacres of 1894–1896
“deceived us with fallacious arguments, saying ‘The Christians are enemies
of our religion. Do not allow their eyes to be opened. Give them no peace.
Rob them of their property, seize and abduct their wives and daughters by
force. Give false witness against them. For when they are left at ease they will
ruin our land and religion.’ ” 48
The assaults on the Armenian villa gers began on or around August 19
and lasted three weeks. The precipitating incident occurred in Simal, where
Bekiranli Kurds raided the herds, killing a shepherd and carry ing off a thou-
sand head. Armenians gave chase and, after a firefight, retrieved the stolen
animals. Two or three Kurds were killed. The Kurds brought the bodies to
the authorities, apparently after mutilating them. The Kurds alleged that
“the Armenians were up in arms and that there were foreigners among them
instigating . . . revolt.” An Ottoman commander backed them up.49 In response,
a missionary wrote, “The government secretly gave the Kurds carte blanche
to do what they could to the Armenians.”50 The Kurds then demanded an
indemnity in cash, which the Armenians said they could pay but only in
kind. The Kurds refused, and attacked the next day.51
The first targets were the small villages of Ghelie Genneman and Alliantz.
After destroying these, the Kurds moved on to Simal, Senik, and their satel-
lites. These were wealthy, tax- paying villages. Most of the inhabitants fled to Geligüzan or into the hills, where they joined other villa gers, who apparently
had sought refuge there after local Kurds warned them of impending attacks
on their homes.52
At Geligüzan the Armenians beat back repeated Kurdish assaults. The
Turks responded by sending in regulars and mountain guns from Diyarbekir,
Van, Bitlis, and Erzurum to reinforce the Kurds. There may also have been
several regiments of Hamidiye cavalry. Some reports say they bivouacked in
Muş and never actually reached the killing fields, but instead ravaged nearby
Armenian villages. Nominally Zeki Pasha, the muşir (general) of the 4th Army Corps, was giving the orders, though command in the field appears to have
been exercised by Col o nels Ismail Bey and Tevfik Pasha. According to a
British diplomat, a Major Salih, of the Muş Battalion, was a prominent par-
ticipant in the massacre.53 In an effort to cover their traces, some government
troops dressed as Kurds.54 The Kurds were “constantly in and out of [the sol-
diers’] camp,” one Turkish soldier later testified.55
Abdülhamid
II
The resisting Armenians, women among them, eventually ran out of am-
munition and fled to Mount Andok (Anduk Dağı) with Kurds and Turks on
their heels.56 “That night the sky was red with the flames of our burning
homes,” an Armenian fighter later recalled.57 Hundreds, perhaps as many as
two thousand, made it up Mount Andok, firing and rolling boulders down
the slopes at their pursuers. But Turkish and Kurdish firepower and resolution
gradually prevailed.58 Within days, the Armenians collapsed. Some defenders
were killed; some women, with their children, jumped to their deaths from
the cliffs.59 Other Armenians managed to escape and hid for weeks in forests
and scrublands. Kurdish and Turkish troops scoured the area for survivors,
usually killing them on the spot. One survivor later described her ordeal:
When the Kurds came on us, I . . . tried to escape with 3 other women
(two being aunts of my husband) but, there being no time, we hastily
hid ourselves amongst some thick bushes, where we were soon discov-
ered by a band of 4 Kurds and 3 soldiers. We begged and implored for
mercy. But they knocked us down with the butt- end of their guns and
killed my three companions. Then a soldier snatched my three-
months- old babe (a boy) from my arms and, in spite of tearful plead-
ings, threw him against a rock, then pierced him with his fixed bayonet
and threw him up in the air. The other soldiers then cut him up into
pieces. They then all fell on me, swearing and kicking, and knocking
me down with the butt- end of their guns. One of the Kurds then,
finding me young, deci ded to take me with him. But I refused to follow
him and become a Mohammedan. They threatened and tortured me
and fi nally deci ded to kill me, but I was dressed in fine clothes, [so]
they undressed me—so as not to soil them with my blood. When, in
doing so, they discovered the gold coins in my head- dress and some
thirty pounds in my belt, they immediately began to fight amongst them-
selves. Taking advantage of this opportunity I flew away through the
dense brushwood. They fired after me but missed me. I hid myself and
remained there all day, all night and all next day— trembling from
fright, famished with hunger, and shivering from cold. . . . During the
second night I ventured out and putting on some clothes which I got
from the dead bodies of some women, I wandered through the forest
The Massacres of 1894–1896
in search of food and assistance. I then met an Armenian named
Kaleh . . . and we managed to reach Khnoos.60
Led by a priest, Der Hohanes Mardovan, about 400 men and women who
had first fled to Mount Andok surrendered at Geligüzan in exchange for a
guarantee of protection. They were “urged to accept Islam” but refused. On
Col o nel Ismail’s orders, a soldier gouged out Mardovan’s eyes. The mutilated
priest then begged for his own death— “Let me die,” he said— and was bayo-
neted, according to both a survivor and a soldier who witnessed the scene.61
In the days that followed the troops massacred many of the men who had re-
turned to Geligüzan. Some reports speak of a single mass killing of about 40
villa gers. Another describes hundreds systematically killed in batches of ten
to twenty over a number of nights. All reports agree that the dead were dumped
into one or more pre- dug trenches or pits and covered with earth.62
A further massacre, by soldiers, appears to have taken place in the Ghelie
San Ravine, five hours walk from Geligüzan. Hundreds of Armenians hid
there.63 Some were burnt to death, others hacked to pieces, still others killed by shrapnel.64 Armenians, including women, were tied to horses and dragged
through fields until they died. Houses crammed with people were set alight.
Kurdish chieftains and Ottoman officers abducted women, raped them, and
forced them to convert. Some were serially raped at the church in the nearby
village of Galin, then murdered.65 Young boys were abducted into Muslim
house holds.66 Occasionally, abductors sold the children. For instance, a chief
of the Kurdish Rushkotli tribe sold a brother and sister, aged 9 and 11, for
150 piasters.67 To avoid discovery, mothers suffocated crying children.68
Fearing what would befall them if they were found, some Armenians jumped
into a “raging” river and drowned. “The river is said to have been red with
blood for three days,” a missionary reported.69 Several survivors went mad.70
Priests were subjected to especially vile treatment. One was reportedly “strung
to a beam and cut to pieces.” Another was chained by the neck, with two sol-
diers pulling from opposite sides. In the end, bayonets were placed upright
in the ground and the priest was thrown on them. All told, six or seven were
