by Benny Morris
itants of Erzurum city itself. The consul opined that there seemed to be no
reason for the deportation, as the Armenians were not seditious and were
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unarmed. Moreover, many of the young men had already been drafted, and
those who sympathized with Rus sia had crossed the border long ago. Depor-
tations would mainly affect women and children. On May 22 the consul
reported his astonishment at the speed with which muhacirs were replacing
the deportees. “ These people are also plundering the Armenians’ property.
There are grounds for the assumption that possibly even from the very
beginning the purpose of the relocation was to make room for the immi-
grants.” He suspected that the mea sures were being taken on German advice.
On the margins of the consul’s letter, Fritz Bronsart von Schellendorf, the
German Chief of Staff of the Ottoman Army, noted that he thought the Arme-
nians were in rebellion and the Turks were the ones deserving sympathy.22
As in Zeytun, when the rural Erzurum deportations began, the destination
was not yet clear. The first convoys made their way to Erzincan, a six- day
walk due east, and continued to Sivas and Kastamonu in central Anatolia. But
soon the accompanying troops were told that these areas were “unsuitable,”
and the Public Security Directorate of the Interior Ministry (Emniyet- i Umu-
miye Müdüriyeti) instructed the valis to redirect convoys southward through Urfa and Mosul to Deir Zor.23 To most of the deportees, the never- ending
trudge must have seemed aimless, designed to kill them off through ex-
haustion, hunger, and thirst.
On June 13 deportations began from Erzurum city itself. The first to go
were members of the Armenian business community. The initial caravan—
consisting of some forty notable families from the city and from nearby
Bayburt— was at first allowed to travel in relative comfort, perhaps to mislead
those who would follow. In Kığı sanjak, about sixty miles southwest of Er-
zurum, roughly a hundred of the notables were murdered and some of the
women and children abducted. Two men disguised as women survived
the massacre.24
Victoria Barutjibashian, another survivor, described the departure from
Erzurum city. Her family had packed what provisions it could on three
horses, but, two hours after starting out, the convoy was robbed by brigands
and villa gers. In the following days, the accompanying gendarmes “separated
the men, one by one, and shot them . . . every male above fifteen years old. By
my side were killed two priests, one of them over ninety years of age.” She
testified that brigands “took all the good- looking women and carried them
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off on their horses . . . among them my sister, whose one- year- old baby they
threw away; a Turk picked it up and carried it off. . . . My mother walked
till she could walk no farther, and dropped by the roadside on a mountain
top.”25 At some point Barutjibashian gave up and agreed to convert and join
a convoy of wagons taking widows to Constantinople. Along the way, she
passed many corpses, mainly of women and girls.26
At the end of July, reports of a massacre at Kemah Gorge began leaking out
of the empire. Lepsius, the German missionary, informed Morgenthau that the
deportees from Erzurum had been taken to the gorge, between Erzincan and
Harput, and were slaughtered there: gendarmes, assisted by some 250 brig-
ands, killed about 7,000 people. Lepsius’s report was corroborated by
Scheubner- Richter and a year later by Lieutenant Baas, who told a British
officer:
The Armenians deported from Erzeroum started with their cattle and
what ever possessions they could carry. . . . The vali of Erzeroum . . .
assured them most solemnly that no harm would befall them. . . . Word
came that the first batch had arrived safely at Kamach, which was true
enough. But the men were kept at Kamach and shot, and the women and
children were massacred by the shotas [brigands] after leaving that
town.27
Another large Erzurum convoy, escorted by gendarmes under the command
of Major Adil Bey, was attacked nearby in the area of Mama Hatun. Among
the witnesses were survivors, such as Missak Vartanian, a former cavass at the
British consulate, who was left for dead. According to the testimony of brig-
ands later arrested by the British, those spared in the initial killings were led the next day to the banks of the Tuzla Su River and murdered by soldiers and
brigands on Adil’s orders.28 Garabeth Hadji Oglu Georgian, a farmer from
the village of Irdazur, told Scheubner- Richter that his column of thousands
of villa gers was attacked repeatedly by Kurds, and many jumped into the Eu-
phrates to save themselves. Some, who escaped to a nearby village, were
pursued by guards and shot down. Georgian himself was shot in the arm.29
Further testimony makes clear that representatives of the CUP and Spe-
cial Organ ization participated in the killing. Kourkin Kellerian, an Armenian
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who in summer 1915 served in the army as an orderly, testified on Sep-
tember 2, 1920, that Majid Bey, a CUP representative at Erzincan, took part
in the Kemah Gorge atrocities along with the local mutesarrif, Memduh Bey.
Both were dressed as brigands.30 Binganoush Bogosian of Erzincan claimed
to have seen Memduh Bey with CUP member Eczacı Mehmet Efendi during
a massacre on the road between Erzincan and Kemah. Bogosian survived by
feigning death, and a few months later became a servant in Memduh’s house,
where he heard discussions about further killings.31 Another eyewitness, a
Mr. Saprastian, claimed that thousands, mostly peasants from Erzurum vil-
lages, were massacred in Kemah by brigands working for the Special Organ-
ization. This despite the fact that the vali, Tahsin, had accepted a bribe of a
thousand Turkish Lira to keep the Armenians safe.32
Gradually restored to strength after Sarıkamiş, the Third Army, com-
manded by General Kȃmil Pasha, also played a role in the Erzurum massa-
cres. The exact extent is unclear, but reports indicate that its officers were
Thousands of Armenians were murdered, in batches, at Kemah Gorge in 1915. Today
the spot is marked with a monument, constructed in 2001, commemorating fourteen
Turkish soldiers who died there when their truck fell into the ravine.
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aware of what was happening and cooperated with the Special Organ ization.
An Armenian doctor serving in the military accused the general of organ izing
massacres in the region. During the postwar investigations, General Süleyman
Faik Pasha, commander of the garrison in Mamuret- ül- Aziz, claimed that
Kâmil sent “many cables ordering that the Armenians be exterminated.”33
Col o nel Stange, a German officer in the Third Army during the deporta-
tions, also pointed the fin ger at his commander who, “besides the Director of
Police, had proven to be the most brutal in executing the orders.”34 He
added, “It is definitely a fact that these Armenians, almost without exception,
were murdered in the region of Mama Hatun by so- called ‘chetes,�
�� Ashirets
[tribes], and similar scum. These acts were, in fact, tolerated by the military
escort cadres, were even accomplished through their assistance.”35 Ac-
cording to Kevorkian, Kȃmil was incensed to discover that Muslims had
sheltered Armenians during the massacres. He warned that any subordinates
caught doing so would be hanged and their houses burned down.36
Not all of the Armenians marched out of Erzurum died in the area of Mama
Hatun and Kemah Gorge. At about the same time reports of these massacres
were reaching Western observers, Leslie Davis, the American consul in Harput,
informed Morgenthau that several thousand Erzurum area Armenians had just
arrived in his town. “A more pitiable sight cannot be imagined,” he wrote.
“They are, almost without exception, ragged, filthy, hungry and sick. This is
not surprising since they have been on the road for almost two months”:
As one walks through the camp mothers offer their children and beg one
to take them. In fact, the Turks have been taking their choice of these
children and girls for slaves, or worse. In fact, they have even had
their doctors there to examine the more likely girls and thus secure the
best ones.
There are very few men among them, as most of them have been killed
on the road. All tell the same story of having been attacked over and over
again. . . . Women and children were also killed. Many died, of course,
from sickness and exhaustion on the way, and there have been deaths
each day that they have been here. Several diff er ent parties have arrived
and, after remaining a day or two, have been pushed on with no apparent
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destination. Those who have reached here are only a small portion, how-
ever, of those who started. By continuing to drive these people on in
this way it will be pos si ble to dispose of all of them in a comparatively
short time.
In a follow-up letter, Davis recounted that a few hundred people, who were
too weak or sick to continue, remained in Harput.
Their camp is a scene from the Inferno. . . . It was bad enough before
when there were several thousand all in a most wretched condition.
Now, when only the worst of them are left behind, the scene beggars all
description. The dead and dying are everywhere. . . . I presume a little
food is brought to these people, but most of them are too far gone to
need food.
Refusing to be deceived that the authorities simply wished to relocate Arme-
nians to less combustible parts of the empire, Davis concluded, “The entire
movement seems to be the most thoroughly or ga nized and effective massacre
this country has ever seen.”37
Trabzon
When the deportation order reached Trabzon in late June 1915, it prob ably
surprised no one. The Tehcir law had been in force for a few weeks, and horror
stories had been emerging from Erzurum for more than a month. Many of
Trabzon’s Muslims opposed the deportations, especially of women and
children, but officials were determined.
On June 16, after meeting with local CUP Branch Secretary (Kâtib- i Mesul)
Nail Bey, Trabzon Vali Cemal Azmi Bey posted an official proclamation in-
tended to allay Armenians’ fears and avert pos si ble re sis tance.38 According
to the vali, deportation was necessary and justified because Armenians had
collaborated with the enemy “to destroy the peace and security of the Ottoman
state.” The government was therefore “compelled to adopt extraordinary mea-
sures and sacrifices both for the preservation of the order and security of the
country, and for the welfare of the Armenian socie ties.”39 But the deportees,
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the vali promised, would be treated decently. When the time came, they would
be given five days to prepare. They would be allowed to carry some movables
and livestock but would be strictly forbidden to sell the rest of their posses-
sions or even to give them to neighbors and friends for safekeeping. Muslims
would also be forbidden from helping, on pain of court- martial. Instead, all
property left behind would be registered with authorities, who would store it
and return it to the deportees after the war. Convoys leaving Trabzon would
be guarded by gendarmes, who would protect the deportees from attack
or affront.40
The Armenians had to settle for such mollifying words, for, unarmed and
disor ga nized, they were in no position to defy anyone. In the weeks before
the deportation announcement, the authorities had done the grisly work of
eliminating the community’s leaders. The bishop of Trabzon was sent south
for interrogation and, along with the bishop of Erzurum, murdered by the gov-
ernor of Gümüşhane sanjak.41 Others, including Dashnak leaders, teachers,
businessmen, and Armenians with Rus sian passports, were dispatched by
boat to Samsun, but “met with an accident at sea” and were never seen again.42
A survivor called Vartan managed to return to Trabzon a few days later, se-
verely wounded and incoherent. He died shortly thereafter. A local Turk later
told the American consul, “This boat was met not far from Trebizond by an-
other boat containing gendarmes. They proceeded to kill all the men and
throw them overboard.” 43 The vali of Trabzon confirmed that seventy- four
people were arrested, “accused of spreading evil and intrigue of the first de-
gree, [and] were sent on their way by land and sea.” 44
The Interior Ministry’s deportation guidelines arrived five days after the
vali’s announcement, but it took another few days before the deportation order
was made public. “Several witnesses, both Turkish and Armenian, affirm that
the course of events was accelerated after Bahaeddin Şakır paid a visit to
Trabzon around 22 / 23 June,” Kevorkian writes.45 On the 24th, after meeting
with Şakır, the vali gave his staff official word of the coming deportation. The
following day Trabzon’s remaining Armenian notables were rounded up. And
the day after that, the deportation date was announced publicly: July 1.
Şakır may have imparted lessons learned from the previous expulsions, but
just as officials became skilled in the art of lethal removal— how to keep de-
portees docile while extracting their riches and deluding them about their
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fate— the Armenians became shrewder. Albeit, their methods were tragic. “I
have seen strong, proud, wealthy men weep like children while they told me
that they had given their boys and girls to Persian and Turkish neighbors,”
the American consul, Oscar Heizer, reported. “Many are providing themselves
with poison which they will take in case the [deportation] order is not
rescinded.” 46
Even the Ottomans’ allies were shocked by the looming deportation at Tra-
bzon and by what had happened in Erzurum. “Heartbreaking” was the word
Ernst von Kwiatkowski, Trabzon’s Austro- Hungarian consul, used. “Consid-
ering the great distance, and lack of food and shelter along the infested route,
banishment to Mosul is the equivalent of a death sentence.” His report
emphasized that
Armenian removal would have negative po liti cal and eco-
nomic consequences; his boss, Ambassador Johann von Pallavicini, prob ably
the Eu ro pean ambassador best connected to the Ottoman court, forwarded
the report to Vienna with an additional comment on the humanitarian situa-
tion: “I hear that the Armenian population expelled from its homeland has
not only been consigned to the greatest of misery, but is also doomed to com-
plete eradication at the hands of the Kurdish bands lying in wait for them.” 47
As the deportation deadline approached, panic took hold in Trabzon. Wit-
nesses described “horrific scenes” in the streets, as well as frantic efforts to
hide women and children.48 To reduce tensions, the vali promised exemp-
tions for the el derly, widows, women in late pregnancy, and government em-
ployees. German, Austrian, and American consular officials did their best to
rescue children. They took pupils from an American missionary school as well
as others left behind and enrolled them in a new Muslim school. They even
invited the vali to be the school’s honorary president and the Greek metro-
politan its vice president. Nail Bey caught on to the ploy, but he didn’t shut
down the school. Instead, he found a way to turn the situation to Muslim ad-
vantage. He rescinded the blanket ban on aiding Armenians and called on
Muslims to take in children. Many did, including Nail Bey himself. According
to Heizer, he “chose ten of the best- looking girls and kept them in a house for
his own plea sure, and the amusement of his friends.” Later, the Turks would
remove some of the children from the makeshift school and add them to con-
voys heading south. Others were disposed of more abruptly. “Many of the
children were loaded into boats and taken out to sea and thrown overboard,”
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Heizer wrote. “I myself saw where 16 bodies were washed ashore and buried
by a Greek woman near the Italian monastery.” 49 According to Lieutenant
Baas, the children “ were taken out to sea in little boats. At some distance out, they were stabbed to death, put in sacks and thrown into the sea.”50
Mass deportation began on the designated date of July 1. That day gen-
