by Benny Morris
from this district.”168
Several factors explain the slow pace of persecution in Urfa. One was
Haydar himself. In May and June, he had received the same instructions as
other governors, and, to some extent, he did Constantinople’s bidding. He
ordered searches, arrested and tortured notables, and sent a few suspected
rabble- rousers to Rakka. He also brandished constantly the threat of mass de-
portation if Armenians did not hand over rebels or weapons. Yet, while other
governors were busy organ izing convoys and executions, Haydar dilly- dallied,
quietly resisting the Interior Ministry’s orders, though never confronting Con-
stantinople head on. How did he get away with it? Perhaps, from the central
government’s perspective, the relatively small number of Armenians in the
sanjak meant it was pointless to quarrel with the mutessarif. Urfa’s popula-
tion numbers put it close to the 5–10 percent Armenian target anyway; fur-
ther culling was not critical.
Another moderating influence was the presence in Urfa of hundreds of
French and En glish nationals, as well as citizens of other enemy states.
Stranded in the city at the start of the war—or relocated there amid the
hostilities, from Damascus, Beirut, Aleppo, and elsewhere— these “belliger-
ents” were dispersed in Christians’ homes— known addresses, where the au-
thorities could keep tabs on them. This complicated life for Armenians, who
had to care for the foreigners and report their activities to the police. But the
foreigners may also have saved their Armenian hosts, at least for a time. Of-
ficials had to assume that any offenses against Armenians would be reported
abroad, so they could not act with impunity.169
In nearby Diyarbekir Vali Reşid was unhappy with the tarrying in Urfa. Al-
though he had no formal authority there— Urfa was in Aleppo vilayet—he
sent two CUP men and their helpers from his local Special Organ ization batal-
lion, to “assist” Haydar. In late July the team began to arrest leaders of Urfa’s
Armenian community and deport them to “that death- trap” Diyarbekir.170 Ac-
cording to Jakob Künzler, a Swiss deacon and surgeon then in Urfa, it was
generally believed that none of the detainees— including fifty imprisoned
Armenian notables plus the Armenian bishop and a pharmacist working in
Künzler’s hospital— “ will ever reach Diyarbekir.”171
The Eastern River
August 19 brought Urfa still closer to the brink. In a search of Urfa’s Chris-
tian quarter, police encountered several deserters, who opened fire, killing
two officers. Locals, mostly Kurds, retaliated by slaughtering Christians and
looting their houses. An estimated 250 or more were killed before Haydar
stopped the massacre, following appeals by missionaries and an American
envoy.172 The city and district were teetering on a precipice when, two days
later, Talât telegraphed Haydar to remind him of the deportation order.173 The
elusive mutessarif gave instructions to prepare for removals but did not carry
them out.
Urfa fi nally exploded on September 16, when Armenians ambushed and
killed two gendarmes and wounded eight. Police and soldiers then surrounded
the Armenian quarter and opened fire. Some Armenians took refuge in mis-
sionary compounds. Others took Leslie and seven other Westerners hos-
tage.174 They also killed some Muslim neighbors. Consul Jackson reported
that “the authorities urged” local Kurds to attack the Armenians in response.
“This they did willingly in the expectancy of rich loot.” But the Armenians,
Armenian militiamen in Urfa 1915, some in Arab dress. The fighters fi nally surrendered when promised they would not be harmed by their captors, but all were killed by
Ottoman troops.
The Young Turk s
who “had a goodly supply of arms and ammunition,” held out and inflicted
heavy losses on the Kurds.175
At the beginning of October, the Fourth Army arrived to finish the job. One
of its commanders, Fakhri Pasha, demanded that Urfa’s kadi, Mustafa Şevket
Bey, issue a fatwa approving bombardment of the Armenian quarter. The kadi
refused, but the army went ahead anyway. Before the attack, a large poster went
up warning missionaries not to shelter Armenians and to abandon their build-
ings, a message that was useless to the hostages. The next day 6,000 troops
attacked the Armenians, bombarding the quarter and the mission com-
pound.176 The Armenians, Jackson recounted, “ were literally blown from
their homes.177 In four weeks of fighting, the army lost dozens but crushed
what Enver called the “rebellion.”178
The Armenian fighters were promised that they would be allowed to leave
town unharmed if they laid down their arms. But after surrendering, they were
shackled and executed— hanged, shot, or pushed from a cliff. Şevket Bey later
claimed that Fakhri had ordered Ali Galip (Ghalib), the commander of the
132nd and 133rd infantry regiments, to carry out the executions.179 As for
women, children, and old men, they were corralled into khans inside Urfa,
where many died of diseases. “Gendarmes, soldiers, officers and civilians came
to these khans and picked out the girls they wanted and carried them away,”
Elvesta Leslie, a missionary and wife of Francis Leslie, recalled.180 The survi-
vors were deported to Rakka and Deir Zor, but apparently not directly. Elvesta
Leslie later learned that the women and children were turned around again
and again. “In this way they were obliged to travel over the same road five or
six times.”181
Distraught by the carnage, Francis Leslie committed suicide on October
30.182 The American Embassy pressed for an explanation. Talât apparently
responded that he would look into the matter, then cabled Haydar, seeking
scapegoats. Talât deci ded that “the escort accompanying the first convoy
from Urfa to Rakka witnessed improper be hav ior on the part of negligent
gendarmes, which included the abduction of women.” Supposedly it was
this that resulted in Francis Leslie’s suicide. “Investigations should be made
and the culprit gendarmes . . . punished,” Talât added.183
Haydar’s efforts notwithstanding, the Urfa of 1916 was much like the rest
of eastern Anatolia: essentially devoid of Armenians. In February 1917, Talât’s
The Eastern River
people estimated that, of 15,000 prewar Armenian residents, 14,000 were un-
accounted for.184 At the beginning of 1916, members of the Commission for
Disposition of Abandoned Property (Emvāl- I Metruke Tevsiye Komisyonu) ar-
rived in Urfa to take charge of Armenian homes and belongings. They broke
into Armenians’ stores and sold the wares, pocketing some of the receipts
and delivering the rest to the government. Some of the money was used to fix
Muslim- owned houses burned in the fighting; Muslims were also resettled in
former Armenian homes. Some Armenians had entrusted property to the
German missionary Franz Eckart, but he betrayed them and sold the prop-
erty to the government.185
Urfa’s Muslims soon realized they needed the Christians. “Finding them-
selve
s without pharmacists, millers, bakers, tanners, shoe makers, dyers,
weavers, tailors, or other artisans or tradesmen,” Muslims petitioned Cemal
Pasha in December 1916 to return tradesmen who had been exiled to Rakka.
By May 1917 about 6,000 Armenian deportees were resettled in Urfa. They
worked “in perfect harmony with the ferocious characters that only one year
before had fanatically destroyed 14,000 Christians,” Jackson wrote.186
Musadağ
The story of Musadağ, immortalized in Franz Werfel’s novel Forty Days of
Musa Dag, stands out as a symbol of Armenian re sis tance in the bloody
summer and fall of 1915.187 A few thousand Armenians lived in villages in the
rugged foothills of Musadağ (Mt. Moses), which looms over the Mediterranean
near the westernmost part of the present- day Turkish- Syrian border. Com-
munications between the villages and the regional capital, Antakya (Antioch),
were maintained only by “narrow mule paths.”188
Initially the area was exempted from deportations, but in late July, Constan-
tinople ordered the governor to expel the Armenians.189 By then Reverend
Dikran Andreasian, a Protestant pastor who had worked in Zeytun and wit-
nessed the destruction of the community, managed to return to his native
Musadağ- area village, Yoğunoluk, and helped convince the locals to resist.
On July 31 4,000–5,000 villa gers climbed up the mountain and fortified
positions around its summit. They had just 120 modern rifles and a cache of
shotguns. A Turkish detachment was sent to demand their surrender. The
The Young Turk s
Armenians refused, and, on August 8, repelled a Turkish assault. The Turks
then sent in reinforcements, but their plans were foiled by a daring raid. In
the middle of the night, Armenians snuck into the Turkish camp and stole
guns, explosives, and ammunition.190
In an August 19 cable, Jackson described the actions as “the most effective
re sis tance so far offered by the Armenians.”191 The Turkish army apparently
concurred and brought in local Muslim villa gers to mount fresh assaults,
shelling the defenders and laying siege. But an Armenian messenger slipped
through and reached Aleppo, a hundred miles away, with a letter from An-
dreasian describing their predicament. Jackson then tried to contact the
French fleet patrolling the littoral to let them know of the siege and its prox-
imity to the Mediterranean shore.192 It is unclear whether the message got
through, or whether French sailors simply noticed the giant flags hoisted on
the mountaintop. In any event the French sent a shore party to make contact
with the Armenians and provide them munitions and provisions.193
The French then asked the British to assist in the “removal of 5,000 old
men, women and children to Cyprus.”194 The British were reluctant, but on
The Armenian defenders of Musadağ, with their flag. U.S. diplomat Jesse B. Jackson described their stand against the Turks as “the most effective re sis tance so far offered by the Armenians.”
The Eastern River
September 12, after fifty- three days on the mountaintop, the Armenians
trekked down, boarded French warships, and from there were transferred to
British custody.195 The refugees were taken to Port Said, where most remained
until war’s end.
After the war, most of the refugees were shipped back to Musadağ, which
was placed under French rule as part of the Hatay area of the Syrian Man-
date. But in 1939 the French transferred the Hatay to Turkey, and most of
the Armenians left again. A few remained, though. Today one can visit their
descendants at Vakifli, on the slopes of Musadağ. It is the only Armenian vil-
lage in Turkey.
5
The Western River, and Downstream
For the architects of genocide, the western part of the empire was less chal-
lenging than the east. There were fewer Armenians in the metropolitan heart-
land and on the coasts. Urbane, comparatively well- off, and better integrated
in Ottoman life, westerners were also less militant than their more down-
trodden eastern cousins. While western Armenians were subject to the same
deportation law as easterners, their removal was treated with less urgency and
attended by less immediate vio lence. But Constantinople was only delaying
the inevitable, giving the Special Organ ization time to soften up the easterners
before the westerners, too, were deported into their clutches.
Those clutches were tightest in the area of Deir Zor, in Aleppo vilayet.
From all points across Anatolia, the rural east and the cosmopolitan west,
Armenians trudged through the vilayet on their way to the Deir Zor camps.
The arrivals were mostly women, children, el derly people, and the ill or
other wise nonthreatening. All had suffered months of acute hardship. But,
unlike countless loved ones, they still had their lives. For a time, they enter-
tained the possibility that they would start over there. Instead they were
taken into the desert in groups, shot or stabbed to death, and dumped into
unmarked graves.
The West
The deportations in the West were preceded by arrests of Armenian leaders
at the local and national levels. During the first two weeks of April 1915, poli-
ticians, professionals, and intellectuals were rounded up in Maraş, Hacin
The Western River, and Downstream
(Saimbeyli), and other central Anatolian towns. The decapitation effort
reached peak intensity on the night of April 24, when several hundred leading
Armenians, including members of parliament and party leaders, were arrested
in Constantinople on charges of assisting the enemy.1 The detainees included
major figures in the national movement identifiable to Armenians throughout
the empire.2 All were deported to the villages of Ayaş and Çankırı in central
Anatolia; most were later murdered.3
With the elite out of the way—an elite that could influence outsiders and
or ga nize Armenians in the east— the west could be left alone for a while. Only
in August– October, when the deportation and massacres in the east were
drawing down, were orders issued to start deporting large groups of Arme-
nians from the west.
Most western communities were denuded of Armenians, but Constantinople
and Smyrna were impor tant exceptions. In both cases, elites were deported,
but quietly, without fanfare, and the masses never joined them on the journey
southward. This may reflect an effort to avoid outside scrutiny. As coastal
centers of po liti cal and commercial life, both cities were home to large foreign communities, including diplomats. Large- scale deportations would be closely
observed and could trigger international repercussions. Turkey’s German
allies would have been embarrassed, and the Americans alienated.
In Smyrna other reasons were also at play. The vali, Rahmi Bey, appears
to have opposed the policy. And there were only 13,000 Armenians in the
city itself and a few thousand in outlying towns and villages— clearly less
than 5 percent of the vilayet’s population. Another obstacle was General
Liman von Sanders, the German commander of the Ottoman Fifth Army,
deployed in Ion
ia and Gallipoli. He was chiefly worried about potential
Ottoman Greek disloyalty but saw little point in persecuting the barely felt
Armenians.
When the western deportations began in earnest in the fall, the pattern dif-
fered from that in the east. Although murders and arrests occurred, wholesale
massacres were few, and men were at times allowed to accompany their fami-
lies into exile. Where able- bodied men were separated, they might not face
immediate execution but instead be forced to march.
Another major difference was the use of rail. By 1915 a rail network con-
nected western and central Anatolia to Baghdad, with the Syrian Desert in
The Young Turk s
between. In some cases western deportees were allowed to buy train tickets
to their designated destinations, perhaps because the thousand- mile treks
would have been a logistical and security challenge, taxing escorts and af-
fording many opportunities for escape. This dispensation might have made
the journey appreciably easier, but instead it created a new hardship. With
troops and supplies needed on multiple fronts, the rail system was usually mo-
nopolized by the military. Deportees were often barred from boarding trains,
and thousands found themselves huddled under guard in railway stations for
weeks or months, rain or shine. They lacked food, and disease abounded. A
Palestinian- Jewish traveler who passed through such a station in Osmaniye
or Gülek, in December 1915, reported, “They were lying about . . . on the
sidings and some on the track itself. Some were jostled on to the line when
the train arrived, and the engine ran over them, to the joy of the engine driver,
who shouted to his friends: ‘Did you see how I smashed about 50 of these
Armenian swine?’ ” 4 In November, seeking to speed up removals, Talât
ordered that Armenians be allowed only to carry hand luggage onto trains.
Officials along the route were ordered to confiscate any other items with
promises that they would be returned once the Armenians were settled in
their new homes.5
Onboard, the deportees were packed tight in small, two- tiered livestock
cars. Up to eighty might be crammed in a single car. No food or drink was
