by Benny Morris
and carried out by police officers after Muslim shop- owners had been warned
to stay away and clear out their merchandise.130 Hamid Bey had Gevranlizâde
Memduh Bey, the chief of police, arrested and banished for his suspected
role. Crusading against an official conspiracy only made CUP officials more
wary of Hamid. Not long after the fire, he was removed from office, and, on
March 28, 1915, replaced by Reşid.131
As an arch- nationalist with military training, Reşid was well suited to enact
the CUP plan for Armenian destruction. Indeed, historians have long assumed
that these qualities made him an attractive choice for vali in the eyes of party
bosses.132 Recently, however, historian Hilmar Kaiser has argued on the basis
of Ottoman documents that Reşid was transferred to Diyarbekir in order to
defuse a personal feud with authorities in Baghdad and Mosul, where he had
previously been vali.133
What ever the reason for Reşid’s reassignment, he was an energetic agent
of the government’s will. He brought to Diyarbekir dozens of shady charac-
ters, whom he immediately placed in charge of the local gendarmerie. He also
immediately joined forces with Pirinççioğlu to coordinate the massacres. Tes-
timony from an Ottoman official indicates that Feyzi had attended secret
CUP Central Committee meetings in Constantinople in which the annihila-
tionist policy was discussed and was then sent back to Diyarbekir to help
orchestrate the campaign.134 He also recruited Kurdish and Circassian chief-
tains to the cause and offered to pardon perpetrators.135
The Young Turk s
Along with the new police chiefs, Ruşdi and Veli Necdet (Nejdet), Feyzi
set up a local branch of the Special Organ ization.136 According to a detailed
report by one eyewitness, the three men gathered the “worst specimens of
thieves, brigands, murderers, deserters,” fashioned them into eleven battal-
ions, and appointed themselves commanders. With Reşid, the group estab-
lished a Superior Council, which met regularly to discuss operational
details.137
Weeks before the national deportation plan was set in motion, Reşid and
the council had produced their own, approved tacitly by Talât.138 The strategy
was set in motion on April 16, when local units of the Special Organ ization
surrounded the Armenian quarters in Diyarbekir, searched for arms, and ar-
rested 300 young men.139 Three days later most of the community’s notables,
including religious leaders and directors of financial institutions, were under
lock and key. Party leaders came next. At the beginning of May, government
employees, lawyers, intellectuals, educators, and many of the more established
artisans were jailed. Altogether 900 were imprisoned in just a few weeks. The
city’s remaining Armenians called a general meeting. Some proposed re sis-
tance, even rebellion; others advocated passive defiance. But any idea of op-
position was dropped when Hachadoor (Khatchadur) Digranian, a member
of the provincial council, warned that he would support the exile or impris-
onment of re sis tance advocates.140
The detainees were tortured to extract confessions.141 Reportedly, one
of these detainees was the Armenian bishop, Chilgadian, who was dragged
through the city to the entrance of the main mosque, where he was doused in
petroleum and burned nearly to death. He was then thrown into the stables of
the municipal hospital, where he died in agony.142 According to the Armenian
assistant of Britain’s consular agent in Diyarbekir, the American missionary
Floyd Smith was the only doctor who dared treat Bishop Chilgadian. Appar-
ently, when the vali heard of this, he warned Smith to keep away. Smith and his
family were later banished from the city.143
After a sham trial on May 30, 636 Armenian notables were found guilty of
vari ous crimes and sent down the Tigris on rafts, toward Mosul. Ten days later
they came ashore at the village of Shkifta, where a Kurdish brigand called
Amero (or Ömer)— apparently in cahoots with Reşid— lured the Armenians
into a trap and had them shot in a nearby valley. In the days that followed,
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more Armenians were sent down the river and disposed of in a similar fashion.
The German vice- consul in Mosul, Walter Holstein, protested after body parts
and abandoned rafts floated through his city.144 A few weeks later, Reşid in-
vited Amero to Diyarbekir to receive a medal. The brigand set out but never
arrived. It was rumored that he was assassinated by his Circassian escorts, pro-
vided by Reşid, so that no one would be left to testify about the authorities’
role in the mass murder.145
While Diyarbekir’s Armenian notables were being disposed of, Reşid set
his sights on Mardin, the province’s picturesque second city and a center of
multisectarian Christian life. But Mardin’s mutesarrif, Hilmi Bey, refused to
take part in the extermination. Mardin Armenians, he argued, were loyal citi-
zens. Most were Catholic and spoke Arabic rather than Armenian; they had
little in common with rebels in other regions. In spite of Hilmi’s guardian-
ship, Mardin’s Christians sensed the coming storm. On May 1 the Armenian
Catholic archbishop, Ignatius Maloyan, sent a letter to his congregation
naming his successor and proclaiming, “I have never broken any of the laws
of the Sublime Porte. . . . I urge all of you to follow my example. . . . Pray to
[God] to give me the power and courage . . . to carry me through this final
time and the trials of martyrdom.”146
Starting on June 3, Reşid’s men began rounding up Mardin’s Christian
leaders. Hundreds of Armenian, Assyrian, and Greek notables, including
Maloyan, were interned in the citadel or in underground dungeons outside
the city. A week later, after torture and forced confessions, the notables were dispatched on the road to Diyarbekir. Muslim townspeople “jeered and
children threw stones” at the men as they were paraded out of Mardin, chained
or roped together in batches of forty. Last in the pro cession was Maloyan, bare-
headed and barefooted.147 On the road, Gevranlizâde Memduh Bey— the
former chief of police, set free by Feyzi Bey after the bazaar fire and rehired
by Reşid— read out what he claimed was an imperial edict condemning the
detainees to death. Maloyan apparently improvised a religious ser vice and then
was marched off alone and executed. The rest followed.148
More convoys left Mardin on June 14; July 2, 17, and 27; and August 10.
Almost all of the deportees were Armenians. Most were stripped naked and
murdered soon after leaving town, although some apparently reached the
Syrian Desert. The caravan of June 14 included Assyrians, but, soon after
The Young Turk s
setting out, many of them were returned to Mardin unharmed, prob ably on
instructions from Talât.149
In general, the reprieve of non- Armenian Christians was an illusion. Clem-
ency was short- lived, and, even while the order was supposedly in force,
local officials regularly ignored it without penalty. One need look no farther
than Tur Abdin, an area east of Mardin incl
uding the heavi ly Christian kazas
of Midyat, Beşiri, Cizre, and Nisibin (Nusaybin).150 On June 15 the Grego-
rian, Armenian Protestant, and Syrian Chaldean males of Nisibin were
rounded up and executed. A few days later, the women were slaughtered, some
in a stone quarry. The Syrian Orthodox community was left untouched until
August, when they, too, along with their bishop, were murdered. Only a few
Assyrians managed to escape to Mount Sinjar.151 On August 24 Muslim mili-
tiamen dealt with Cizre’s 2,000 Christian inhabitants, most of them Assyr-
ians. Before then, the Christian communities had managed to buy off local
powerbrokers. But, when the time came, the adult males were taken and mur-
dered on the banks of the Tigris. The women and children were taken to a
Dominican monastery and an Assyrian church, where they were robbed and
raped. Some were then taken away by Muslims; the rest were murdered.152
The Syrian Christians of Diyarbekir did offer significant re sis tance. Their
strongest stand came in July, at the villages of Azakh (Hazik, Azik), Ayn Wardo,
and Basibrin. For months, Kurdish tribes and Turkish soldiers commanded
by Inspector- General Ömer Naci Bey— apparently a Special Organ ization
operative— were unable to subdue the mostly Syrian Orthodox and Syrian
Catholic villa gers, who were joined by Armenian and Assyrian refugees from
surrounding villages. The state even had at its disposal Christian collabora-
tors from Cizre, who hoped to save their own skins. But the Azakh leaders
reportedly swore, “We all have to die sometime, do not die in shame and hu-
miliation” and lived up to their fighting words. In mid- November the rebels
even managed to raid and put to flight a large Turkish military encampment,
killing hundreds. The Ottomans eventually pulled back, leaving the Assyr-
ians in possession of their villages and weapons.153
This was a rare event in the maelstrom of Christian destruction. By Oc-
tober virtually the entire Armenian population of Diyarbekir had been either
murdered or deported, and, in total, Christian communities lost between 70
and 80 percent of their members. Most of the deportees were killed in valleys
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around Diyarbekir city—24,000 in Dev il’s Valley (Şeytan Dere), between Di-
yarbekir and Urfa, alone. Occasionally, the wealthiest bought their survival.
Morgenthau wrote, “I was told that Kazazian, perhaps the richest Armenian
at Diarbekir . . . paid a large sum of money to the governor general . . . for the privilege (!) of being imprisoned in order to avoid deportation and certain
death. This was arranged and Kazazian and the Armenian Catholic Bishop
were imprisoned on a po liti cal charge.” Others managed to survive by con-
verting, but many converts were also deported and killed.154
In late June, when the massacres were in full swing, the Venezuelan merce-
nary de Nogales arrived in Diyarbekir and met with Reşid, whom he described
as “a hyena who kills without ever risking his own life.”155 Reşid did not try
to hide the fact that he and his men were committing mass murder. Indeed,
he told de Nogales that they had been ordered to do so in a pithy circular
tele gram from Talât “containing a scant three words: ‘Yak— vur— Oldur!’
meaning, ‘Burn, demolish, kill.’ ” Although de Nogales was fighting with the
Ottomans, he could not help mourning. “As a result of the extermination of
the Armenians who were the nucleus of [the vilayet’s] artisan and merchant
classes,” de Nogales recounted, “the bazaars of Djarbekir were almost deserted
at the time of my visit; and the city’s rich industries of tapestries, Moorish
leather, silks and woolens were practically para lyzed.”156
After the war the British high commissioner in Constantinople, Admiral
Somerset Gough- Calthorpe, estimated that the Armenian population of the
vilayet had been reduced from 120,000 to 20,000 and the Assyrian popula-
tion from 81,000 to 23,000. The admiral’s goal was not to determine the
extent of the injustice committed against the Christians; it was, amid con-
flicting claims for self- determination, to demonstrate that the existence of such a small Armenian population could not justify demands for Armenian autonomy, much less in de pen dence. Still, his report— which was based on Turkish
rec ords, an extended tour by British officers, and meetings with the heads of
Diyarbekir communities—is revealing.157
Other numbers differ in absolute terms but tell the same story. According
to Talât’s calculations, there were 56,000 Armenians in the vilayet before the
war and fewer than 2,000 in 1917. Yet in a tele gram sent on September 15,
1915, Reşid claimed to have deported 120,000 Armenians.158 Historian Uğur
Ümit Üngör suggests that altogether some 150,000 Christians were murdered
The Young Turk s
Ethnic composition of Diyarbekir, according to British calculations, July 1919
Ethnic group
Prewar population
1919 population
Kurds
750,000
600,000
Chaldeans and Assyrians
81,000
23,000
Armenians
120,000
20,000
Turks
3,000
2,500
Yezidis, Greeks, and Circassians
10,000
8,000
in the summer of 1915 in Diyarbekir vilayet, more than half of them, and per-
haps as many as two- thirds, belonging to vari ous Assyrian sects.159
In late 1915 Reşid was summoned to Constantinople to explain his actions.
In doing so, he stated the very position from which the CUP, for public-
relations purposes, was trying to distance itself:
If you, like me in Diyarbekir, had had the opportunity to see at close
quarters with what kind of secret plans the Armenians let themselves be
possessed, in what prosperity they lived, what an awful animosity they
felt toward the state, then you would not today be making any admoni-
tions. The Armenians in the Eastern Provinces were so aggressive . . . if
they were allowed to remain in place, not a single Turk or Muslim would
be left alive.
It was, he concluded “ either them or us.”160
What happened in Diyarbekir was so grotesque that even high- ranking
Ottoman officials could deny neither their horror nor the lawlessness of the
perpetrators. In testimony before a postwar court martial in Constantinople,
General Vehib Pasha admitted that the treatment of Christians in Diyarbekir
constituted “crimes” of incomparable “magnitude and tragic character.” In
“number and nature,” they “went beyond all the crimes” he other wise de-
scribed to the court martial. Accompanying the supposedly protected classes
of Greeks and Assyrians, “Families who had been known for centuries for their
loyalty to the state and the ser vices they rendered it, were killed, along with
their children.”161
The Eastern River
Urfa
After the massacres of 1895, Urfa was left with a relatively small Armenian
population. According to Francis H. Leslie, a U.S. consular agent and head
of the local American mission,
there were only four Christian villages and
about ten of mixed population within a day’s journey.162 Lacking Christians
to teach and proselytize, Leslie and his fellow missionaries busied themselves
with humanitarian work among Muslims and ran a handkerchief factory. By
October 1914 Leslie, like many foreigners elsewhere in Anatolia, did not feel
any special tension around him: “We cannot see . . . that the Moslems are in
any re spect less friendly, at least not in our city. . . . There seems to be no cause for alarm.”163
His mind would soon change. From late May 1915, long columns of de-
portees began passing through the city on their way to the desert. In Urfa’s old
town— according to local lore, a holy site where the prophet Abraham was
born and persecuted by Nimrod, the king— people thronged the dusty
pavements to watch the ragged survivors from Zeytun, Trabzon, Erzurum, Er-
zincan, Harput, and Diyarbekir slog through.164 In August Leslie reported
that for weeks he had “witnessed the most terrible cruelties inflicted upon
the thousands of Christian exiles who have daily been passing through our
city from the northern cities. All tell the same story and bear the same scars:
their men were all killed on the first day’s march from their cities, after which the women and girls were constantly robbed of their money, bedding, and
clothing, and beaten, criminally abused and abducted along the way.” Upon
arrival in Urfa, some women were taken by local Muslim men. Many others,
and children, died in an encampment outside the city.165
In the suffering of the arrivals, Urfa’s Armenians could picture their own
future. Some responded by stockpiling weapons and ammunition, and, as
summer wore on, they would dig tunnels and erect barricades.166 But little
happened. In mid- May, when deportees were first coming through, a few
prominent Urfan Armenians were sent off to Rakka and prob ably killed on
the way. Other wise, the central government’s repeated orders to deport and
destroy had no effect on the Armenians of Urfa.167 As late as September 18,
after all other eastern regions had been cleansed, the mutessarif, Haydar Bey,
The Young Turk s
was able to report that, with a few exceptions, “no Armenians were deported
