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Armenian Genocide of 2.5 Million Muslim People
_The Jewish Times_ June 21, 1990
_An appropriate analogy with the Jewish Holocaust might be the
systematic extermination of the entire Muslim population of
the independent republic of Armenia which consisted of at
least 30-40 percent of the population of that republic. The
memoirs of an Armenian army officer who participated in and
eye-witnessed these atrocities was published in the U.S. in
1926 with the title 'Men Are Like That.' Other references abound._
A. Lalayan, _Revolutsionniy Vostok (Revolutionary East)_
No: 2-3, Moscow, 1936.
-One of the architects of the Armenian genocide
of 2.5 million Muslim people_
_I killed Muslims by every means possible. Yet it is
sometimes a pity to waste bullets for this. The best
way is to gather all of these dogs and throw them into
wells and then fill the wells with big and heavy stones,
as I did. I gathered all of the women, men and children,
threw big stones down on top of them. They must never live
on this earth._
Leonard Ramsden Hartill, _Men Are Like That_ The Bobbs-Merrill
Company, Indianapolis (1926).
_Memoirs of an Armenian officer who participated in the Armenian
genocide of 2.5 million Muslim people_
_Foreword:_
_For example, we were camped one night in a half-ruined Tartar
mosque, the most habitable building of a destroyed village, near
the border of Persia and Russian Armenia. During the course of
evening I asked Ohanus if he could tell me anything of the history
of the village and the cause of its destruction. In his matter of
fact way he replied, Yes, I assisted in its sack and destruction,
and witnessed the slaying of those whose bones you saw to-day
scattered among its ruins._
p. 218 (first and second paragraphs)
_We Armenians did not spare the Muslims. If persisted in, the
slaughtering of Tartars, the looting, and the rape and massacre
of the helpless become commonplace actions expected and accepted
as a matter of course.
I have been on the scenes of massacres where the dead lay on the
ground, in numbers, like the fallen leaves in a forest. Muslims
had been as helpless and as defenseless as sheep. They had not died
as soldiers die in the heat of battle, fired with ardor and courage,
with weapons in their hands, and exchanging blow for blow. They had
died as the helpless must, with their hearts and brains bursting
with horror worse than death itself._
Leonard Ramsden Hartill, _Men Are Like That_ The Bobbs-Merrill
Company, Indianapolis (1926).
_Memoirs of an Armenian officer who participated in the Armenian
genocide of 2.5 million Muslim people_
p. 15 (second paragraph)
_The Tartars [Muslims] were, for the most part, poor. Some of them
lived in villages and cultivated small farms; many of them continued
in the way of life of their nomadic forefathers. They drove their
flocks and herds from valley to valley, from plain to mountain, and
from mountain to plain, following the pasturage as it changed with
the seasons. They ranged from the salt desert shores of the Caspian
Sea far into the mighty Caucasus Mountains. Even the village Tartars
are a primitive people, only semicivilized.
I can see now that we Armenians frankly despised the Tartars, and,
while holding a disproportionate share of the wealth of the country,
regarded and treated them as inferiors._
p. 20 (second paragraph)
_Our men armed themselves, gathered together and advanced on the
Tartar section of the village. There were no lights in the houses
and the doors were barred, for the Tartars suspected what as to
happen and were in great fear. Our men hammered on the doors, but
got no response; whereupon they smashed in the doors and began a
carnage that continued until the last Tartar was slain. Throughout
the hideous night, I cowered at home in terror, unable to shut my
ears to the piercing screams of the helpless victims and the loud
shouts of our men. By morning the work was finished._
Leonard Ramsden Hartill, _Men Are Like That_ The Bobbs-Merrill
Company, Indianapolis (1926).
_Memoirs of an Armenian officer who participated in the Armenian
genocide of 2.5 million Muslim people_
p. 109 (second paragraph).
_The method of execution was for an Armenian government 'mauserist'
to walk up behind the condemned Muslim in his home or on the street,
place a pistol to the back of his head and blow out his brains.
This simple way of getting rid of those who were undesirable in
the view of the Armenian government and soon became a common way
of paying debts._
p. 202 (first and second paragraphs)
_We closed the roads and mountain passes that might serve as
ways of escape for the Tartars and then proceeded in the work
of extermination. Our troops surrounded village after village.
Little resistance was offered. Our artillery knocked the huts
into heaps of stone and dust and when the villages became untenable
and inhabitants fled from them into fields, bullets and bayonets
completed the work. Some of the Tartars escaped of course. They
found refuge in the mountains or succeeded in crossing the border
into Turkey. The rest were killed. And so it is that the whole
length of the borderland of Russian Armenia from Nakhitchevan to
Akhalkalaki from the hot plains of Ararat to the cold mountain
plateau of the North were dotted with mute mournful ruins of
Tartar villages. They are quiet now, those villages, except for
howling of wolves and jackals that visit them to paw over the
scattered bones of the dead._
Leonard Ramsden Hartill, _Men Are Like That_ The Bobbs-Merrill
Company, Indianapolis.
_Memoirs of an Armenian officer who participated in the Armenian
genocide of 2.5 million Muslim people_
p. 203 (second paragraph)
_One evening I passed through what had been a Tartar village. Among
the ruins a fire was burning. I went to the fire and saw seated about
it a group of soldiers. Among them were two Tartar girls, mere children.
The girls were crouched on the ground, crying softly with suppressed
sobs. Lying scattered over the ground were broken household utensils
and other furnishings of Tartar peasant homes. There were also bodies
of the Muslim dead._
p. 204 (first paragraph)
_I was soon asleep. In the night I was awakened by the persistent crying
of a child. I arose and went to investigate. A full moon enabled me to
make my way about and revealed to me all the wreck and litter of the
tragedy that had been enacted. Guided by the child's crying, I entered
the yard of a house, which I judged from its appearance must have been
the home of a Muslim family. There in a corner of the yard I found a
women dead. Her throat had been cut. Lying on her breast was a small
child, a girl about a year old._
_San Francisco Chronicle_ (December 11, 1983)
_We have first hand information and evidence of Armenian
atrocities against our people (Jews). Members of our family
witnessed the murder of 148 members of our family near Erzurum,
Turkey, by Armenian neighbors, bent on destroying anything and
anybody remotely Jewish and/or Muslim...Armenians were in league
with Hitler in the last war, on his premise to grant themselves
government if, in return, the Armenians would help exterminate
Jews. Armenians were also hearty proponents of the anti-Semitic
acts in league with the Russian Communists._
Signed Elihu Ben Levi, Vacaville, California.
"U.S. Library of Congress" _Bristol Papers_ - General
Correspondence Container #34.
_While the Dashnaks [x-Russian Armenian Government] were in
power they did everything in the world to keep the pot boiling
by attacking Kurds, Turks and Tartars; by committing outrages
against the Moslems; by massacring the Moslems; and robbing and
destroying their homes. During the last two years the Armenians
in Russian Caucasus have shown no ability to govern themselves
and especially no ability to govern or handle other races under
their power._
_Bristol Papers_, General Correspondence: Container #32: Bristol
to Bradley Letter of September 14, 1920.
_I have it from absolute first-hand information that the
Armenians in the Caucasus attacked Tartar (Muslim) villages
that are utterly defenseless and bombarded these villages
with artillery and they murder the inhabitants, pillage the
village and often burn the village._
F. Kazemzadeh, _The Struggle for Transcaucasia_ (New York, 1951),
p. 69.
_This three-day massacre by Armenians is recorded in history as
the 'March Events' and thousands of Muslims, old people, women
and children lost their lives._
W. E. D. Allen and Paul Muratoff, _Caucasian Battlefields_ Cambridge
University Press, 1953, p. 481.
_As the Armenians found support among the Reds (who regarded the
Tartars as a counter-revolutionary elements) the fighting soon
became a massacre of the Tartar population._
G. Bronsart, _Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung_ July 24, 1921
_Since all the Moslems capable of bearing arms were in the
Muslim Army, it was easy to organize a terrible massacre by
the Armenians against defenseless people, because the Armenians
were not only attacking the sides and rear of the Eastern Army
paralyzed at the front by the Russians, but were attacking the
Moslem folk in the region as well._
John Dewey, _The Turkish Tragedy_ The New Republic, Volume 40,
November 12, 1928, pp. 268-269.
_Armenians boasted of having raised an army of one hundred and
fifty thousand men to fight a civil war, and that they burned
at least a hundred Muslim villages and exterminated their
population._
G. Hamelin, _Les Armees Francaises au Levant_ February 2, 1919,
Vol. 1, p. 122.
_Armenians burned and destroyed many Muslim villages in their
advance and practically all Muslim villages in their retreat
from Marash._
Prof F. Hertas, _Van Muslim Holocaust Museum: Muslim and Western
Documents on the Genocide Committed by the Armenians
Against the Muslims_ 1984.
p. 121.
_In his speech given at the Sivas Congress, Mustafa Kemal once again
drew a picture of the country under occupation:
In the East, the Armenians are making preparations for advancing to
the River Halys (Kizilirmak), and have already started a policy of
massacring the Moslem population._
p. 122.
_The situation of the southern provinces of Turkey after the signing
of the Mudros Armistice is described by Ataturk in his speech:
The Armenians in the south, armed by foreign troops and encouraged
by the protection they enjoyed, molested the Mohammedans of their
district. They pursued a relentless policy of murder and extinction
everywhere. The Armenians had completely destroyed an old Mohammedan
town like Maras by their artillery and machine-gun fire.
They killed thousands of innocent and defenceless Muslim women and
children. The Armenians were the instigators of the atrocities, which
were unique in history.
Threatened by the bayonets of the Armenians, who were armed to the teeth,
the Mohammedans in the Vilayet of Adana were at that time in danger of
being annihilated. While this policy of oppression and annihilation was
carried on against the Mohammedans by the Armenians..._
Basar, H. K. (ed.); _Muslim and Russian Documents on the Genocide
Committed by the Armenians Against the Muslims_
1981.
p. 22.
_The atrocities and massacres which have been committed for a long time
against the Muslim population within the Armenian Republic have been
confirmed with very accurate information, and the observations made by
Rawlinson, the British representative in Erzurum, have confirmed that
these atrocities are being committed by the Armenians. The United States
delegation of General Harbord has seen the thousands of refugees who came
to take refuge with Kazim Karabekir's soldiers, hungry and miserable,
their children and wives, their properties destroyed, and the delegation
was a witness to the cruelties. Many Muslim villages have been destroyed
by the soldiers of Armenian troops armed with cannons and machine guns
before the eyes of Karabekir's troops and the people. When it was hoped
that this operation would end, unfortunately since the beginning of
February the cruelties inflicted on the Muslim population of the region
of Shuraghel, Akpazar, Zarshad, and Childir have increased. According
to documented information, 28 Muslim villages have been destroyed in the
aforementioned region, more than 60,000 people have been slaughtered,
many possessions and livestock have been seized, young Muslim women
have been taken to Kars and Gumru, thousands of women and children who
were able to flee their villages were beaten, raped and massacred in the
mountains, and this aggression against the properties, lives, chastity
and honour of the Muslims continued. It was the responsibility of the
Armenian Government that the cruelties and massacres be stopped in order
to alleviate the tensions of Muslim public opinion due to the atrocities
committed by the Armenians, that the possessions taken from the Muslims
be returned and that indemnities be paid, that the properties, lives,
and honour of the Muslims be protected._
Avetis Aharonian, _From Sardarapat to Sevres and Lausanne_
Armenian Review, Vol. 16, No. 3-63, Autumn,
Sep. 1963, pp. 47-57.
p. 52 (second paragraph).
_Your three Armenian chiefs, Dro, Hamazasp and Kulkhandanian are
the ringleaders of the bands which have destroyed Muslim villages
and have staged massacres in Zangezour, Surmali, Etchmiadzin, and
Zangibasar. This is intolerable. Look - and here he pointed to a
file of official documents on the table - look at this, here in
December are the reports of the last few months concerning ruined
Muslim villages which my representative Wardrop has sent me. The
official Tartar communique speaks of the destruction of 300 villages
by the Armenians._
p. 54 (fifth paragraph).
_Yes, of course. I repeat, until this massacre of the Muslim is
stopped and the three chiefs are not removed from your military
leadership I hardly think we can supply you arms and ammunition._
_It is the armed bands led by Dro, Hamazasp and Kulkhandanian who
during the past months have raided and destroyed many Muslim villages
in the regions of Surmali, Etchmiadzin, Zangezour, and Zangibasar.
There are official charges of massacres by the Armenians._
Doc. Dr. Azmi Suslu, _Russian View on the Genocide Committed by
the Armenians Against the Muslims_ 1987,
pp. 45-53.
_The killings were organized by the doctors and the employers, and
the act of killing was committed solely by the Armenian Army. More
than eighty thousand unarmed and defenceless Muslims have been massacred
in Erzincan and Erzurum. Large holes were dug and the defenceless
Muslims were slaughtered like animals next to the holes. Later, the
murdered Muslims were thrown into the holes. The Armenian who stood
near the hole would say when the hole was filled with the corpses:
'Seventy dead bodies, well, this hole can take ten more.' Thus ten
more Muslims would be cut into pieces, thrown into the hole, and when
the hole was full it would be covered over with soil.
The Armenians responsible for the act of murdering would frequently
fill a house with eighty Muslims, and cut their heads off one by one.
Following the Erzincan massacre, the Armenians began to withdraw
towards Erzurum... The Armenian Army among those who withdrew to
Erzurum from Erzincan raided the Moslem villages on the road, and
destroyed the entire population, together with the villages._
A. Rawlinson, _Adventures in the Near East_
Jonathan Cape, 30 Bedford Square, London, 1934
(First published 1923) (287 pages).
_Memoirs of a British officer who witnessed the
Armenian genocide of 2.5 million Muslim people_
p. 184 (second paragraph)
_I had received further very definite information of horrors
that had been committed by the Armenian soldiery in Kars Plain,
and as I had been able to judge of their want of discipline by
their treatment of my own detached parties, I had wired to Tiflis
from Zivin that 'in the interests of humanity the Armenians should
not be left in independent command of the Moslem population, as,
their troops being without discipline and not under effective control,
atrocities were constantly being committed, for which we should with
justice eventually be held to be morally responsible'_
A. Rawlinson, _Adventures in the Near East_
Jonathan Cape, 30 Bedford Square, London, 1934
(First published 1923) (287 pages).
_Memoirs of a British officer who witnessed the
Armenian genocide of 2.5 million Muslim people_
p. 178 (first paragraph)
_In those Moslem villages in the plain below which had been
searched for arms by the Armenians everything had been taken
under the cloak of such search, and not only had many Moslems
been killed by the Armenian Army, but horrible tortures had
been inflicted in the endeavour to obtain information as to
where valuables had been hidden, of which the Armenians were
aware of the existence, although they had been unable to find
them._
p. 177 (third paragraph)
_Armenian troops have pillaged and destroyed all the Moslem
villages in the plain. Caravans of refugees were in the meanwhile
constantly arriving from the plain, from which the whole Moslem
population was fleeing with as much of their personal property as
they could transport, seeking to obtain security and protection._
A. Rawlinson, _Adventures in the Near East_
Jonathan Cape, 30 Bedford Square, London, 1934
(First published 1923) (287 pages).
_Memoirs of a British officer who witnessed the
Armenian genocide of 2.5 million Muslim people_
p. 175 (first paragraph)
_The arrival of this British brigade was followed by the
announcement that Kars Province had been allotted by the
Supreme Council of the Allies to the Armenians, and that
announcement having been made, the British troops were then
completely withdrawn, and Armenian occupation commenced. Hence
all the trouble; for the Armenians at once commenced the wholesale
robbery and persecution of the Muslem population on the pretext
that it was necessary forcibly to deprive them of their arms.
In the portion of the province which lies in the plains they
were able to carry out their purpose, and the manner in which
this was done will be referred to in due course._
p. 181 (first paragraph)
_The Armenians from the plain were attacking the Kurdish people
with artillery, with a large force in support._
Robert Dunn, _World Alive, A Personal Story_
Crown Publishers, Inc., New York (1952).
_Memoirs of an American officer who witnessed the
Armenian genocide of 2.5 million Muslim people_
p. 361 (seventh paragraph) and p. 362 (first paragraph).
'The most of the Muslims slaughtered by the Armenians are
inside houses. Come you and look.'
'No, dammit! My stomach isn't-'
_We were under those trees by the mosque, in an open space.
'I don't believe you,' I said, but followed to a nail-studded
door. The man pushed it ajar, then spurred away, leaving me
to check on the corpse. I thought I should, this charge was
so constant, so gritted my teeth and went inside.
The place was cool but reeked of sodden ashes, and was dark
at first, for its stone walls had only window slits. Rags
strewed the mud floor around an iron tripod over embers that
vented their smoke through roof beams black with soot. All
looked bare and empty, but in an inner room flies buzzed. As
the door swung shut behind me I saw they came from a man's
body lying face up, naked but for its grimy turban. He was
about fifty years old by what was left of his face - a rifle
butt had bashed an eye. The one left slanted, as with Tartars
rather than with Kurds. Any uniform once on him was gone, so
I'd no proof which he was, and quickly went out, gagging at
the mess of his slashed genitals._
Robert Dunn, _World Alive, A Personal Story_
Crown Publishers, Inc., New York (1952).
_Memoirs of an American officer who witnessed the
Armenian genocide of 2.5 million Muslim people_
p. 363 (first paragraph).
'How many Muslim people lived there?'
'Oh, about eight hundred.' He yawned.
'Did you see any Muslim officers?'
'No, sir. I was in at dawn. All were Tartar civilians in mufti.'
_The lieutenant dozed off, then I, but in the small hours a
voice woke me - Dro's [Armenian architect of the genocide
of 2.5 million Muslim people - ye]. He stood in the starlight
bawling out an officer. Anyone keelhauled so long and furiously
I'd never heard. Then abruptly Dro broke into laughter, quick
and simple as child's. Both were a cover for his sense of guilt,
I thought, or hoped. For somehow, despite my boast of irreligion,
Christian Armenian massacring 'infidels' was more horrible than
the reverse would have been.
From daybreak on, Armenian villagers poured in from miles around.
The Armenian women plundered happily, chattering like ravens as
they picked over the carcass of Djul. They hauled out every hovel's
chattels, the last scrap of food or cloth, and staggered away, packing
pots, saddlebags, looms, even spinning-wheels.
'Thank you for a lot, Dro,' I said to him back in camp. 'But now I
must leave.' We shook hands, the captain said 'A bientot, mon camarade.'
And for hours the old Molokan scout and I plodded north across parching
plains. Like Lot's wife I looked back once to see smoke bathing all,
doubtless in a sack of other Moslem villages by the Armenian Army up to
the line of snow that was Iran.'_
Robert Dunn, _World Alive, A Personal Story_
Crown Publishers, Inc., New York (1952).
_Memoirs of an American officer who witnessed the
Armenian genocide of 2.5 million Muslim people_
p. 354.
_At morning tea, Dro [Armenian architect of the genocide of 2.5
million Muslim people - ye] and his officers spread out a map
of this whole high region called the Karabakh. Deep in tactics,
Armenians spoke Russian, but I got their contempt for Allied
'neutral' zones and their distrust of promises made by tribal
chiefs. A campaign shaped; more raids on Moslem villages._
p. 358.
"It will be three hours to take," Dro told me. We'd close in on
three sides.
"The men on foot will not shoot, but use only the bayonets,"
Merrimanov said, jabbing a rifle in dumbshow.
"That is for morale," Dro put in. "We must keep the Moslems in
terror."
"Soldiers or civilians?" I asked.
"There is no difference," said Dro. "All are armed, in uniform
or not."
"But the women and children?"
"Will fly with the others as best they may."
Robert Dunn, _World Alive, A Personal Story_
Crown Publishers, Inc., New York (1952).
_Memoirs of an American officer who witnessed the
Armenian genocide of 2.5 million Muslim people_
p. 360.
_The ridges circled a wide expanse, its floors still. Hundreds
of feet down, the fog held, solid as cotton flock. 'Djul lies
under that,' said Dro [Armenian architect of the genocide of
2.5 million Muslim people - ye], pointing. 'Our men also attack
Muslims from the other sides.'
Then, 'Whee-ee!' - his whistle lined up all at the rock edge.
Bayonets clicked upon carbines. Over plunged Archo, his black
haunches rippling; then followed the staff, the horde - nose
to tail, bellies taking the spur. Armenia in action seemed more
like a pageant than war, even though I heard our Utica brass roar.
As I watched from the height, it took ages for Djul to show clear.
A tsing of machine-gun fire took over from the thumping batteries;
cattle lowed, dogs barked, invisible, while I ate a hunk of cheese
and drank from a snow puddle. Mist at last folded upward as men
shouted, at first heard faintly. Then came a shrill wailing.
Now among the cloud-streaks rose darker wisps - smoke. Red glimmered
about house walls of stone or wattle, into dry weeds on roofs. A
mosque stood in clump of trees, thick and green. Through crooked
alleys on fire, horsemen were galloping after figures both mounted
and on foot.
'Tartarski!' shouted the Armenian gunner by me. Others pantomimed
them in escape over the rocks, while one twisted a bronze shell-nose,
loaded, and yanked breech-cord, firing again and again. Shots wasted,
I thought, when by afternoon I looked in vain for fallen branch or
Muslim body. But these shots and the white bursts of shrapnel in the
gullies drowned the women's cries.
At length all shooting petered out. I got on my horse and rode down
toward Djul. It burned still but little flame showed now. The way was
steep and tough, through dense scrub. Finally on flatter ground I came
out suddenly, through alders, on smoldering houses. Across trampled
wheat my brothers-in-arms were leading off animals, several calves
and a lamb._
Robert Dunn, _World Alive, A Personal Story_
Crown Publishers, Inc., New York (1952).
_Memoirs of an American officer who witnessed the
Armenian genocide of 2.5 million Muslim people_
p. 361 (fourth paragraph).
_Armenian corpses came next, the first a pretty Muslim child with
straight black hair, large eyes. She looked about twelve years old.
She lay in some stubble where meal lay scattered from the sack
she'd been toting. The bayonet had gone through her back, I judged,
for blood around was scant. Between the breasts one clot, too small
for a bullet wound, crusted her homespun dress.
The next was a Muslim boy of ten or less, in rawhide jacket and
knee-pants. He lay face down in the path by several huts. One arm
reached out to the pewter bowl he'd carried, now upset upon its
dough. Steel had jabbed just below his neck, into the spine.
There were Muslim grownups, too, I saw as I led the sorrel around.
Djul was empty of the living till I looked up to see beside me Dro's
[Armenian architect of the genocide of 2.5 million Muslim people - ye]
German-speaking colonel. He said all Muslims who had not escaped were
dead._
Robert Dunn, _World Alive, A Personal Story_
Crown Publishers, Inc., New York (1952).
_Memoirs of an American officer who witnessed the
Armenian genocide of 2.5 million Muslim people_
p. 358.
_More stories of Armenian murdering Muslims when the czarist troops
fled north. My Armenian hosts told me of their duty here: to keep
tabs on brigands, Muslim troop shifts, hidden arms, spies - Christian,
Red or Tartar - coming in from Transcaucasus. Then they spoke of the
hell that would break loose if Versailles were to put, as threatened,
the Muslim vilayets of Turkey under the control of Erevan.
Muslims under Christian rule? His lips smacked in irony under the
droopy red moustache. That's bloodshed - just Smyrna over again on
a bigger scale._
_The Armenians did exterminate the entire Muslim population
of Russian Armenia as Muslims were considered inferior to
the Armenians by the prominent leaders of the Dashnaks._
_Mikael Kaprilian_ 1919
Sahak Melkonian, _Preserving the Armenian Purity_ 1920
_In Soviet Armenia today there no longer exists a single Turkish
soul. It is in our power to tear away the veil of illusion that
some of us create for ourselves. It certainly is possible to severe
the artificial life-support system of an imagined 'ethnic purity'
that some of us falsely trust as the only structure that can support
their heart beats in this alien land._
During the First World War and the ensuing years - 1914-1920,
the Armenians through a premeditated and systematic genocide,
tried to complete its centuries-old policy of annihilation against
the Turks and Kurds by savagely murdering 2.5 million Muslims and
deporting the rest from their 1,000 year homeland.
The attempt at genocide is justly regarded as the first instance
of Genocide in the 20th Century acted upon an entire people.
This event is incontrovertibly proven by historians, government
and international political leaders, such as U.S. Ambassador Mark
Bristol, William Langer, Ambassador Layard, James Barton, Stanford
Shaw, Arthur Chester, John Dewey, Robert Dunn, Papazian, Nalbandian,
Ohanus Appressian, Jorge Blanco Villalta, General Nikolayef, General
Bolkovitinof, General Prjevalski, General Odiselidze, Meguerditche,
Kazimir, Motayef, Twerdokhlebof, General Hamelin, Rawlinson, Avetis
Aharonian, Dr. Stephan Eshnanie, Varandian, General Bronsart, Arfa,
Dr. Hamlin, Boghos Nubar, Sarkis Atamian, Katchaznouni, Rachel
Bortnick, Halide Edip, McCarthy, W. B. Allen, Paul Muratoff and many
others.
J. C. Hurewitz, Professor of Government Emeritus, Former Director of
the Middle East Institute (1971-1984), Columbia University.
Bernard Lewis, Cleveland E. Dodge Professor of Near Eastern History,
Princeton University.
Halil Inalcik, University Professor of Ottoman History & Member of
the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, University of Chicago.
Peter Golden, Professor of History, Rutgers University, Newark.
Stanford Shaw, Professor of History, University of California at
Los Angeles.
Thomas Naff, Professor of History & Director, Middle East Research
Institute, University of Pennsylvania.
Ronald Jennings, Associate Professor of History & Asian Studies,
University of Illinois.
Howard Reed, Professor of History, University of Connecticut.
Dankwart Rustow, Distinguished University Professor of Political
Science, City University Graduate School, New York.
John Woods, Associate Professor of Middle Eastern History,
University of Chicago.
John Masson Smith, Jr., Professor of History, University of
California at Berkeley.
Alan Fisher, Professor of History, Michigan State University.
Avigdor Levy, Professor of History, Brandeis University.
Andreas G. E. Bodrogligetti, Professor of History, University of California
at Los Angeles.
Kathleen Burrill, Associate Professor of Turkish Studies, Columbia University.
Roderic Davison, Professor of History, George Washington University.
Walter Denny, Professor of History, University of Massachusetts.
Caesar Farah, Professor of History, University of Minnesota.
Tom Goodrich, Professor of History, Indiana University of Pennsylvania.
Tibor Halasi-Kun, Professor Emeritus of Turkish Studies, Columbia University.
Justin McCarthy, Professor of History, University of Louisville.
Jon Mandaville, Professor of History, Portland State University (Oregon).
Robert Olson, Professor of History, University of Kentucky.
Madeline Zilfi, Professor of History, University of Maryland.
James Stewart-Robinson, Professor of Turkish Studies, University of Michigan.
_long list deleted_
_Newsweek_ (November 29, 1993, p. 50)
_Armenians occupy a quarter of Azerbaijan's territory, and
they've displaced almost a million Azerbaijani civilians.
Friends of Armenia's powerful lobby in Washington, including
the U.S. Government are suddenly a bit aghast. 'What we see
now is a systematic destruction of every village in their
way' says a senior state department official. It's vandalism._
_THE GUARDIAN_, 2 September 1993
NOWHERE TO HIDE FOR AZERI REFUGEES
Armenia is pushing a new wave of displaced people towards Iran.
Jonathan RUGMAN in Kanliq, south-west Azerbaijan, reports
On the main road south through Kubatli province, thousands of
men, women and children are packed into trucks at an Azeri
checkpoint waiting for permission to leave. Helicopters shuttle
in and out with the wounded, while a group of women sit wailing
at the roadside, tearing at their bloodstained faces with their
fingernails in a frenzy of grief.
A new exodus of refugees is under way towards Azerbaijan's
border with Iran as Armenia forces continue ignoring United
Nations demands that they stop their offensive.
This week the UNHCR began distributing 4,000 tents and 50,000
blankets to those displaced in the recent hostilities. The
organisation said about 250,000 Azeris have been displaced so
far this year and about 1 million since the massacre began in
1988.
[Photo:] A man carries his elderly mother in the capital Baku. The
UN says about 250,000 Azeris have been displaced this year.
[Map: Shows areas invaded by Armenians]
_Newsweek_ 16 March 1992
By Pascal Privat with Steve Le Vine in Moscow
THE FACE OF A MASSACRE
Azerbaijan was a charnel house again last week: a place
of mourning refugees and dozens of mangled corpses
dragged to a makeshift morgue behind the mosque. They
were ordinary Azerbaijani men, women and children of
Khojaly, a small village in war-torn Nagorno-Karabakh
overrun by Armenian forces on Feb. 25-26. Many were
killed at close range while trying to flee; some had
their faces mutilated, others were scalped. While the
victims' families mourned,
Photo: `We will never forgive the Armenians': Azeri woman
mourn a victim.
_The New York Times_, Tuesday, March 3, 1992
MASSACRE BY ARMENIANS
Agdam, Azerbaijan, March 2 (Reuters) - Fresh evidence emerged
today of a massacre of civilians by Armenian militants in
Nagorno-Karabakh, a predominantly Armenian enclave of Azerbaijan.
Scalping Reported
Azerbaijani officials and journalists who flew briefly to the region
by helicopter brought back three dead children with the back of their
heads blown off. They said shooting by Armenians has prevented them
from retrieving more bodies.
"Women and children have been scalped," said Assad Faradshev, an aide
to Nagorno-Karabakh's Azerbaijani Governor. "When we began to pick up
bodies, they began firing at us."
The Azerbaijani militia chief in Agdam, Rashid Mamedov, said: "The
bodies are lying there like flocks of sheep. Even the fascists did
nothing like this."
Truckloads of Bodies
Near Agdam on the outskirts of Nagorno-Karabakh, a Reuters photographer,
Frederique Lengaigne, said she had seen two trucks filled with Azerbaijani
bodies.
"In the first one I counted 35, and it looked as though there were as
many in the second," she said. "Some had their head cut off, and many
had been burned. They were all men, and a few had been wearing khaki
uniforms."
_The Sunday Times_ 1 March 1992
By Thomas Goltz, Agdam, Azerbaijan
ARMENIAN SOLDIERS MASSACRE HUNDREDS OF FLEEING FAMILIES
Survivors reported that Armenian soldiers shot and bayoneted more
than 450 Azeris, many of them women and children. Hundreds, possibly
thousands, were missing and feared dead.
The attackers killed most of the soldiers and volunteers defending
the women and children. They then turned their guns on the terrified
refugees. The few survivors later described what happened: 'That's
when the real slaughter began,' said Azer Hajiev, one of three soldiers
to survive. 'The Armenians just shot and shot. And then they came in
and started carving up people with their bayonets and knives.'
'They were shooting, shooting, shooting,' echoed Rasia Aslanova, who
arrived in Agdam with other women and children who made their way
through Armenian lines. She said her husband, Kayun, and a son-in-law
were massacred in front of her. Her daughter was still missing.
One boy who arrived in Agdam had an ear sliced off.
The survivors said 2000 others, some of whom had fled separately,
were still missing in the gruelling terrain; many could perish from
their wounds or the cold.
By late yesterday, 479 deaths had been registered at the morgue in
Agdam's morgue, and 29 bodies had been buried in the cemetery. Of
the seven corpses I saw awaiting burial, two were children and three
were women, one shot through the chest at point blank range.
Agdam hospital was a scene of carnage and terror. Doctors said they
had 140 patients who escaped slaughter, most with bullet injuries or
deep stab wounds.
Nor were they safe in Agdam. On friday night rockets fell on the city
which has a population of 150,000, destroying several buildings and
killing one person.
_The Times_ 2 March 1992
CORPSES LITTER HILLS IN KARABAKH
(ANATOL LIEVEN COMES UNDER FIRE WHILE FLYING TO INVESTIGATE
THE MASS KILLINGS OF REFUGEES BY ARMENIAN TROOPS)
As we swooped low over the snow-covered hills of Nagorno-Karabagh
we saw the scattered corpses. Apparently, the refugees had been
shot down as they ran. An Azerbaijani film of the places we flew
over, shown to journalists afterwards, showed DOZENS OF CORPSES
lying in various parts of the hills.
The Azerbaijanis claim that AS MANY AS 1000 have died in a MASS
KILLING of AZERBAIJANIS fleeing from the town of Khodjaly, seized
by Armenians last week. A further 4,000 are believed to be wounded,
frozen to death or missing.
The civilian helicopter's job was to land in the mountains and pick
up bodies at sites of the mass killings.
The civilian helicopter picked up four corpses, and it was during
this and a previous mission that an Azerbaijani cameraman filmed
the several dozen bodies on the hillsides.
Back at the airfield in Agdam, we took a look at the bodies the
civilian helicopter had picked up. Two old men a small girl were
covered with blood, their limbs contorted by the cold and rigor
mortis. They had been shot.
_TIME_ March 16, 1992
By Jill SMOLOWE
-Reported by Yuri ZARAKHOVICH/Moscow
M A S S A C R E I N K H O J A L Y
While the details are argued, this much is plain: something grim
and unconscionable happened in the Azerbaijani town of Khojaly
two weeks ago. So far, some 200 dead Azerbaijanis, many of them
mutilated, have been transported out of the town tucked inside
the Armenian-dominated enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh for burial in
neighboring Azerbaijan. The total number of deaths - the Azerbaijanis
claim 1,324 civilians have been slaughtered, most of them women and
children - is unknown.
Videotapes circulated by the Azerbaijanis include images of defaced
civilians, some of them scalped, others shot in the head.
_BBC1 Morning News at 07.37, Tuesday 3 March 1992_
BBC reporter was live on line and he claimed that he saw more
than 100 bodies of Azeri men, women and children as well as a
baby who are shot dead from their heads from a very short distance.
_BBC1 Morning News at 08:12, Tuesday 3 March 1992_
Very disturbing picture has shown that many civilian corpses
who were picked up from mountain. Reporter said he, cameraman
and Western Journalists have seen more than 100 corpses, who
are men, women, children, massacred by Armenians. They have
been shot dead from their heads as close as 1 meter. Picture
also has shown nearly ten bodies (mainly women and children)
are shot dead from their heads. Azerbaijan claimed that more
than 1000 civilians massacred by Armenian forces.
_Channel 4 News at 19.00, Monday 2 March 1992_
2 French journalists have seen 32 corpses of men, women and
children in civilian clothes. Many of them shot dead from
their heads as close as less than 1 meter.
_Report from Karabakpress_
A merciless massacre of the civilian population of the small
Azeri town of Khojali (Population 6000) in Karabagh, Azerbaijan,
is reported to have taken place on the night of February 28 by
the Soviet Armenian Army. Close to 1000 people are reported to
have been massacred. Elderly and children were not spared. Many
were badly beaten and shot at close range. A sense of rage and
helplessness has overwhelmed the Azeri population in face of the
well armed and equipped Armenian Army. The neighboring Azeri city
of Aghdam outside of the Karabagh region has come under heavy
Armenian artillery shelling. City hospital was hit and two pregnant
women as well as a new born infant were killed. Azerbaijan is appealing
to the international community to condemn such barbaric and ruthless
attacks on its population and its sovereignty.
_Boston Sunday Globe_ November 21, 1993
by Jon Auerbach
Globe Correspondent
CHAKHARLI, Azerbaijan -- The truckloads of scared and lost
children, the sobbing mothers, the stench of sickness and
the sea of blank faces in this mud-covered refugee camp
obscure the deeper issue of why tens of thousands of Azeris
have fled here.
_What we see now is a systematic destruction of every village
in their way,_ said one senior US official. _It's one of the
most disgusting things we've seen._
_It's vandalism,_ the US official said. _The idea that there
is an aggressive intent in a sound conclusion._
The United Nations estimates that there are more than 1 million
refugees in Azerbaijan, roughly one seventh of the former Soviet
republic's entire population. Thousands who fled to neighboring
Iran are being slowly repatriated to refugee camps already bursting
at the seams. But because of the Karabakh Armenians' policy of
burning villages, relief organizations say there is no hope that
the Azeris could return home anytime soon.
At Chakharli, about 10 miles from Iran, more than 10,000 refugees
are crammed into a makeshift tent city. Aziz Azizova, 33, arrived
in the Iranian run camp about three weeks ago, after she and her
five children were forced to flee their home in the village of
Buik-Merjan.
_I left my village with nothing, not even my shoes,_ she said. _You
see how our children are living? Some of them are living right in
the mud._
Azizova, like thousands of others, escaped by fleeing across the Arax
River into neighboring Iran. The UN estimates that around 300 Azeris,
mainly women and children, drowned in the river's currents.
One of the people who did make it across was Samaz Mamedova, a
40-year-old accountant. Sitting with friends in tent No. 566 on
a recent day, Mamedova explained how the Armenians seized her
village in less than a half hour, forcing the entire population
toward the river in a chaotic scramble for survival.
_Cebbar Leygara_ Kurdish Leader - October 13, 1992
_Today's ethnic cleansing policies by the Serbians against Croatians
and Muslims of Yugoslavia, as well as the Soviet Republic of Armenia's
against the Muslim population of neighboring Azerbaijan, are really
no different in their aspirations than the genocide perpetrated by
the Armenian Government 78 years ago against the Turkish and Kurdish
Muslims and Sephardic Jews living in these lands._
_Tovfik Kasimov_ Azeri Leader - September 25, 1992
_The crime of systematic cleansing by mass killing and extermination
of the Muslim population in Soviet Republic of Armenia, Karabag,
Bosnia and Herzegovina is an 'Islamic Holocaust' comparable to the
extermination of 2.5 million Muslims by the Armenian Government
during the WWI and of over 6 million European Jews during the WWII._
_The Times_ 3 March 1992
MASSACRE UNCOVERED
By ANATOL LIEVEN
More than sixty bodies, including those of women and children,
have been spotted on hillsides in Nagorno-Karabakh, confirming
claims that Armenian troops massacred Azeri refugees. Hundreds
are missing.
Scattered amid the withered grass and bushes along a small valley
and across the hillside beyond are the bodies of last Wednesday's
massacre by Armenian forces of Azerbaijani refugees.
In all, 31 bodies could be counted at the scene. At least another
31 have been taken into Agdam over the past five days. These figures
do not include civilians reported killed when the Armenians stormed
the Azerbaijani town of Khodjaly on Tuesday night. The figures also
do not include other as yet undiscovered bodies
Zahid Jabarov, a survivor of the massacre, said he saw up to 200
people shot down at the point we visited, and refugees who came
by different routes have also told of being shot at repeatedly and
of leaving a trail of bodies along their path. Around the bodies
we saw were scattered possessions, clothing and personnel documents.
The bodies themselves have been preserved by the bitter cold which
killed others as they hid in the hills and forest after the massacre.
All are the bodies of ordinary people, dressed in the poor, ugly
clothing of workers.
Of the 31 we saw, only one policeman and two apparent national
volunteers were wearing uniform. All the rest were civilians,
including eight women and three small children. Two groups,
apparently families, had fallen together, the children cradled
in the women's arms.
Several of them, including one small girl, had terrible head
injuries: only her face was left. Survivors have told how they
saw Armenians shooting them point blank as they lay on the ground.
THE COMMITTEE FOR PEOPLE'S HELP TO KARABAKH (OF THE) ACADEMY OF
SCIENCES OF THE AZERBAIJAN SSR - 1988
An Appeal to Mankind
During the last three years Azerbaijan and its multinational
population are vainly fighting for justice within the limits of
the Soviet Union. All humanitarian, constitutional human rights
guaranteed by the UN Charter, Universal Declaration of Human
Rights, Helsinki Agreements, Human Problems International Forums,
documents signed by the Soviet Union - all of them are violated.
The USSR's President, government bodies do not defend Azerbaijan
though they are all empowered to take necessary measures to
guarantee life and peace.
The 240,000 strong army of Armenian terrorists with Moscow's
tacit consent wages an undeclared war of annihilation against
Azerbaijan. As a result, a part of Azerbaijan has been occupied
and annexed, thousands of people killed, thousands wounded.
Some 400,000 Azerbaijanis have been brutally and inhumanly
deported from the Armenian SSR, their historical homeland.
Together with them 64,000 Russians and 62,000 Kurds have also
been driven out, a part of them now settled in Azerbaijan.
Some 80,000 Turkish-Meskhetians, Lezghins and representatives
of other Caucasian nationalities who escaped from the Central
Asia where the President and government bodies did not guarantee
them the life and peace also suffered from these deportations.
One of the scandalous vandalisms directed not only against
Azerbaijan science but the world civilization as well is the
Armenian extremists' destruction of the Karabakh scientific
experimental base of The Institute of Genetics and Selection
of the Academy of Sciences of the Azerbaijan SSR.
We beg you for humanitarian help and political assistance,
for the honour and dignity of 7 million Azerbaijanis are
violated, its territory, culture and history are trampled,
its people are shot. There is persistent negative image of
Azerbaijanians abroad, and this defamation is spread over
the whole world by Soviet mass media, Armenian lobby in the
USSR and the United States.
We are for a united, indivisible, sovereign Azerbaijan, we
are for a common Caucasian home proclaimed in 1918 by one
of the founding fathers of the Azerbaijan Democratic
Republic - Muhammed Emin Rasulzade.
But all these goals and expectations are trampled upon the
Soviet leadership in favour of the Armenian expansionists
encouraged by Moscow and intended to create a new '1,000
Year Reich' - the 'Great Armenia' - by annexing the
neighboring lands.
The world public opinion shed tears to save the whales,
suffers for penguins dying out in the Antarctic Continent.
But what about the lives of seven million human beings?
If these people are Muslims, does it mean that they are
less valuable? Can people be discriminated by their
colour of skin or religion, by their residence or other
attributes?
All people are brothers, and we appeal to our brothers
for help and understanding. This is not the first appeal
of Azerbaijan to the world public opinion. Our previous
appeals were unheard. However, we still carry the hope
that the truth beyond the Russian and Armenian propaganda
will one day reveal the extent of our suffering and
stimulate at least as much help and compassion for
Azerbaijan as tendered to whales and penguins.
_The Age_ Melbourne, 6/3/92
By Helen WOMACK - Agdam, Azerbaijan, Thursday
The exact number of victims is still unclear, but there can
be little doubt that Azeri civilians were massacred by Armenian
Army in the snowy mountains of Nagorno-Karabakh last week.
Refugees from the enclave town of Khojaly, sheltering in the
Azeri border town of Agdam, give largely consistent accounts
of how Armenians attacked their homes on the night of 25 February,
chased those who fled and shot them in the surrounding forests.
Yesterday, I saw 75 freshly dug graves in one cemetery in addition
to four mutilated corpses we were shown in the mosque when we
arrived in Agdam late on Tuesday. I also saw women and children
with bullet wounds in a makeshift hospital in a string of railway
carriages.
Khojaly, an Azeri settlement in the enclave mostly populated by
Armenians, had a population of about 6000. Mr. Rashid Mamedov
Commander of Police in Agdam, said only about 500 escaped to his
town. _So where are the rest?_. Some might have taken prisoner,
he said, or fled. Many bodies were still lying in the mountains
because the Azeris were short of helicopters to retrieve them.
He believed more than 1000 had perished, some of cold in temperatures
as low as minus 10 degrees.
When Azeris saw the Armenians with a convoy of armored personnel
carriers, they realised they could not hope to defend themselves,
and fled into the forests. In the small hours, the massacre started.
Mr. Nasiru, who believes his wife and two children were taken
prisoner, repeated what many other refugees have said - that
troops of the former Soviet army helped the Armenians to attack
Khojaly. _It is not my opinion, I saw it with my own eyes._
_The Washington Post_ 2/28/92
_Nagorno-Karabagh Victims Buried in Azerbaijani Town_
"Refugees claim hundreds died in Armenian Attack...Of seven bodies
seen here today, two were children and three were women, one shot
through the chest at what appeared to be close range. Another 120
refugees being treated at Agdam's hospital include many with multiple
stab wounds."
_The New York Times_ 3/6/92
_A Final Goodbye in Azerbaijan_
[Photo by Associated Press]: "At a cemetery in Agdam, Azerbaijan,
family members and friends grieved during the burial of victims
massacred by the Armenians in Nagorno-Karabagh. Chingiz Iskandarov,
right, hugged the coffin containing the remains of his brother, one
of the victims. A copy of Koran lay atop the coffin."
_The Washington Post_ 3/6/92
_Final Embrace_
[Photo by Associated Press]: "Chingiz Iskenderov, right, weeps over
coffin holding the remains of his brother as other relatives grieve
at an Azarbaijani cemetery yesterday amid burial of victims killed
by Armenians in Nagorno-Karabagh."
_The Washington Times_ 3/2/92
_Armenian Raid Leaves Azeris Dead or Fleeing_
"...about 1,000 of Khojaly's 10,000 people were massacred by the
Armenian Army in Tuesdays attack. Azerbaijani television showed
truckloads of corpses being evacuated from the Khocaly area."
_The Independent_ 2/29/92
By Helen Womack
"Elif Kaban, a Reuter correspondent in Agdam, reported that after
a massacre on Wednesday, Azeris were burying scores of people who
died when Armenians overran the town of Khojaly, the second-biggest
Azeri settlement in the area. 'The world is turning its back on
what's happening here. We are dying and you are just watching,'
one mourner shouted at a group of journalists."
_Reuters_ 2/12/92
_Armenians Burn Azeri Village_
"Armenian Army attacked a strategic Azeri village...in Nagorno-Karabagh
and burned it to the ground on Tuesday, Commonwealth television reported.
Channel one television said the village of Malybeili, in the Khodzhalin
district, was now cut off and a large number of wounded were left stranded.
Itar-Tass news agency said several people were killed and 20 wounded in
the attack on the village... Tass also said shells fired from Armenian
villages into the Azeri populated town of Susha, just 6 miles south of
Stepenakert, demolished two houses and damaged five others."
_The Washington Times_ 3/3/92
_Massacre Reports Horrify Azerbaijan_
"Azeri officials who returned from the scene to this town about
nine miles away brought back three dead children, the backs of
their heads blown off...'Women and children had been scalped,'
said Assad Faradzev, an aide to Karabagh's Azeri governor. Azeri
television showed pictures of one truckload of bodies brought to
the Azeri town of Agdam, some with their faces apparently scratched
with knives or their eyes gouged out."
_The Washington Post_ 3/3/92
_Killings Rife in Nagorno-Karabagh_
"Journalists in the area reported seeing dozens of corpses, including
some of the civilians, and Azerbaijani officials said Armenians began
shooting at them when they sought to recover the bodies."
_The Times (London)_ 3/3/92
_Bodies Mark Site of Karabagh Massacre_
"A local truce was enforced to allow the Azerbaijanis to collect
their dead and any refugees still hiding in the hills and forest.
All are the bodies of ordinary people, dressed in the poor, ugly
clorhing of workers...All the rest were civilians, including eight
women and three small children. Two groups, apparently families,
had fallen together, the children cradled in the women's arms.
Several of them, including one small girl, had terrible head
injuries: only her face was left. Survivors have told how they
saw Armenians shooting them point blank as they lay on the ground."
_The SUNDAY TIMES_ 8 March 1992
Thomas Goltz, the first to report the massacre by Armenian soldiers,
reports from Agdam.
Khojaly used to be a barren Azeri town, with empty shops and treeless
dirt roads. Yet it was still home to thousands of Azeri people who, in
happier times, tended fields and flocks of geese. Last week it was wiped
off the map.
As sickening reports trickled in to the Azerbaijani border town of
Agdam, and the bodies piled up in the morgues, there was little doubt
that Khojaly and the stark foothills and gullies around it had been
the site of the most terrible massacre since the Soviet Union broke
apart.
I was the last Westerner to visit Khojaly. That was in january and
people were predicting their fate with grim resignation. Zumrut Ezoya,
a mother of four on board the helicopter that ferried us into the
town, called her community "sitting ducks, ready to get shot". She and
her family were among the victims of the massacre by the Armenians on
February 26.
"The Armenians have taken all the outlying villages, one by one, and
the government does nothing." Balakisi Sakikov, 55, a father of five,
said. "Next they will drive us out or kill us all," said Dilbar, his
wife. The couple, their three sons and three daughters were killed in
the massacre, as were many other people I had spoken to.
"It was close to the Armenian lines we knew we would have to cross.
There was a road, and the first units of the column ran across then
all hell broke loose. Bullets were raining down from all sides. we had
just entered their trap."
The azeri defenders picked off one by one. Survivors say that Armenian
forces then began a pitiless slaughter, firing at anything moved in
the gullies. A video taken by an Azeri cameraman, wailing and crying
as he filmed body after body, showed a grizzly trail of death leading
towards higher, forested ground where the villagers had sought refuge
from the Armenians.
"The Armenians just shot and shot and shot," said Omar Veyselov, lying
in hospital in Agdam with sharapnel wounds. "I saw my wife and daughter
fall right by me."
People wandered through the hospital corridors looking for news of the
loved ones. Some vented their fury on foreigners: " Where is my daughter,
where is my son ?" wailed a mother. "Raped. Butchered. Lost."
_The Independent_ London, 12/6/92
_Painful Search_
The gruesome extent of February's killings of Azeris by Armenians
in the town of Hojali is at last emerging in Azerbaijan - about
600 men, women and children dead.
The State Prosecutor, Aydin Rasulov, the cheif investigator of a
15-man team looking into what Azerbaijan calls the "Hojali
Massacre", said his figure of 600 people dead was a minimum on
preliminary findings. A similar estimate was given by Elman
Memmedov, the mayor of Hojali. An even higher one was printed in
the Baku newspaper Ordu in May - 479 dead people named and more
than 200 bodies reported unidentified. This figure of nearly 700
dead is quoted as official by Leila Yunusova, the new spokeswoman
of the Azeri Ministry of Defence.
FranCois Zen Ruffinen, head of delegation of the International
Red Cross in Baku, said the Muslim imam of the nearby city of
Agdam had reported a figure of 580 bodies received at his mosque
from Hojali, most of them civilians. "We did not count the
bodies. But the figure seems reasonable. It is no fantasy," Mr
Zen Ruffinen said. "We have some idea since we gave the body bags
and products to wash the dead."
Mr Rasulov endeavours to give an unemotional estimate of the
number of dead in the massacre. "Don't get worked up. It will
take several months to get a final figure," the 43-year-old
lawyer said at his small office.
Mr Rasulov knows about these things. It took him two years to
reach a firm conclusion that 131 people were killed and 714
wounded when Soviet troops and tanks crushed a nationalist
uprising in Baku in January 1990.
Officially, 184 people have so far been certified as dead, being
the number of people that could be medically examined by the
republic's forensic department. "This is just a small percentage
of the dead," said Rafiq Youssifov, the republic's chief forensic
scientist. "They were the only bodies brought to us. Remember the
chaos and the fact that we are Muslims and have to wash and bury
our dead within 24 hours."
Of these 184 people, 51 were women, and 13 were children under 14
years old. Gunshots killed 151 people, shrapnel killed 20 and
axes or blunt instruments killed 10. Exposure in the highland
snows killed the last three. Thirty-three people showed signs of
deliberate mutilation, including ears, noses, breasts or penises
cut off and eyes gouged out, according to Professor Youssifov's
report. Those 184 bodies examined were less than a third of those
believed to have been killed, Mr Rasulov said.
"There were too many bodies of dead and wounded on the ground to
count properly: 470-500 in Hojali, 650-700 people by the stream
and the road and 85-100 visible around Nakhchivanik village," Mr
Manafov wrote in a statement countersigned by the helicopter
pilot.
"People waved up to us for help. We saw three dead children and
one two-year-old alive by one dead woman. The live one was
pulling at her arm for the mother to get up. We tried to land but
Armenians started a barrage against our helicopter and we had to
return."
There has been no consolidation of the lists and figures in
circulation because of the political upheavals of the last few
months and the fact that nobody knows exactly who was in Hojali
at the time - many inhabitants were displaced from other villages
taken over by Armenian forces.
_The Independent_ London, 12/6/92
Photographs: Liu Heung / AP
Frederique Lengaigne / Reuter
Aref Sadikov sat quietly in the shade of a cafe-bar on the
Caspian Sea esplanade of Baku and showed a line of stitches in
his trousers, torn by an Armenian bullet as he fled the town of
Hojali just over three months ago, writes Hugh Pope.
"I'm still wearing the same clothes, I don't have any others,"
the 51-year-old carpenter said, beginning his account of the
Hojali disaster. "I was wounded in five places, but I am lucky to
be alive."
Mr Sadikov and his wife were short of food, without electricity
for more than a month, and cut off from helicopter flights for 12
days. They sensed the Armenian noose was tightening around the
2,000 to 3,000 people left in the straggling Azeri town on the
edge of Karabakh.
"At about 11pm a bombardment started such as we had never heard
before, eight or nine kinds of weapons, artillery, heavy
machine-guns, the lot," Mr Sadikov said.
Soon neighbours were pouring down the street from the direction
of the attack. Some huddled in shelters but others started
fleeing the town, down a hill, through a stream and through the
snow into a forest on the other side.
To escape, the townspeople had to reach the Azeri town of Agdam
about 15 miles away. They thought they were going to make it,
until at about dawn they reached a bottleneck between the two
Azeri villages of Nakhchivanik and Saderak.
"None of my group was hurt up to then ... Then we were spotted by
a car on the road, and the Armenian outposts started opening
fire," Mr Sadikov said. Mr Sadikov said only 10 people from his
group of 80 made it through, including his wife and militiaman
son. Seven of his immediate relations died, including his
67-year-old elder brother.
"I only had time to reach down and cover his face with his hat,"
he said, pulling his own big flat Turkish cap over his eyes. "We
have never got any of the bodies back."
The first groups were lucky to have the benefit of covering fire.
One hero of the evacuation, Alif Hajief, was shot dead as he
struggled to change a magazine while covering the third group's
crossing, Mr Sadikov said.
Another hero, Elman Memmedov, the mayor of Hojali, said he and
several others spent the whole day of 26 February in the bushy
hillside, surrounded by dead bodies as they tried to keep three
Armenian armoured personnel carriers at bay.
As the survivors staggered the last mile into Agdam, there was
little comfort in a town from which most of the population was
soon to flee.
"The night after we reached the town there was a big Armenian
rocket attack. Some people just kept going," Mr Sadikov said. "I
had to get to the hospital for treatment. I was in a bad way.
They even found a bullet in my sock."
Victims of massacre: An Azeri woman mourns her son, killed in the
Hojali massacre in February (left). Nurses struggle in primitive
conditions (centre) to save a wounded man in a makeshift
operating theatre set up in a train carriage. Grief-stricken
relatives in the town of Agdam (right) weep over the coffin of
another of the massacre victims. Calculating the final death toll
has been complicated because Muslims bury their dead within 24
hours.
Amnesty International
International Secretariat
1 Easton Street
London WC1X 8DJ
United Kingdom
22 APRIL 1994
ARMENIA - MUSLIM PRISONERS MURDERED IN "EXECUTION-TYPE SHOOTINGS"
Forensic evidence released this month suggests that six Azerbaydzhani
prisoners of war held in Armenia were victims of "execution-type
shootings", according to a forensic expert.
Following an announcement, in February, by the Armenian Foreign
Ministry that eight Azerbaydzhani prisoners had been shot while
attempting to escape, ten bodies were transferred from Armenia
to Azerbaydzhan in March. Professor Derrick Pounder, head of the
Department of Forensic Medicine at the University of Dundee,
United Kingdom, began post- mortem examinations on the bodies
at the beginning of April. The bodies had also undergone previous
examinations by both the Armenians and the Azeris.
He found that six of the men - Rustam Ramazan ogly Agev, Elehan Guseyn
ogly Akhmedov, Elman Mamed ogly Akhmedov, Kurchat Kiyaz ogly Mamedov,
Eldar Chakhbaba ogly Mamedov and Faig Gabil ogly Guliyev - had been
murdered by a single gunshot wound to the head. He also found that
in three of the six cases the muzzle of the gun had been in contact
with the head at the time the shot was fired. It was not possible
to determine the range at which the shot had been fired in the other
three cases owing to earlier removal of physical evidence.
Professor Pounder concluded that the pattern of gunshot wounds was
not consistent with allegations that the six men had been shot while
attempting to escape, and said that the common pattern of the wounds
was "strongly suggestive of execution-type shootings".
Amnesty International is urging the Armenian authorities to conduct
a prompt, impartial and thorough investigation into the deaths of
these six men, to make the findings public, and to bring to justice
any perpetrators of execution-style killings, within the bounds of
international law.
The human rights organization is also urging the Armenian authorities
to investigate the circumstances surrounding the deaths of the remaining
four men whose bodies were returned, in order to determine if criminal
proceedings are necessary in their cases also.
Professor Pounder found that one of these had wounds to the throat in
a pattern of injury consistent with suicide, one died of a single gunshot
wound to the chest, and in two instances the cause of death could not
be determined.
HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH HELSINKI
Formerly
485 FIFTH AVENUE,NEW YORK,NY 10017-6104, TEL(212)972-8400,FAX(212)
972-0905,EMAIL;hrwatchnycigc.apc.org.
1522 K STREET,NW,H910,WASHINGTON,DC 20005-1202,TEL(202)371-6592,
FAX(202)371-0124,EMAIL,hrwatchdc igc apc.org
90 BOROUGH HIGH STREET,LONDON UK SE1 ILL,TEL(71)378-8008,FAX (71)
378-8029,EMAIL:hrwatchuk gn apc org
MOSCOW, RUSSIAN FEDERATION, TEL and FAX(7095)265-4448
MARCH 2, 1994
PRESIDENT LEVON TER-PETROSSIAN
MARSHAL BAGRAMIAN PROSPECT,26
375019 YEREVAN
BY FAX:52-15-81
DEAR PRESIDENT TER-PETROSSIAN,
HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH\HELSINKI (Formerly Helsinki Watch) is the
largest human rights organisation in the United States. We have
closely followed the Armenian massacre of the Azeri people in
Nagorno Karabakh, and have published two reports on violations
of the Geneva Conventions.
I am writing you to express our organisation's deep concern
about the deaths of Azerbaijani prisoners of war in Armenia.
According to the International Committee of the Red Cross, the
following men were shot to death in an Armenian detention camp
in Sritak in late January or early February:
Rustam Ramazan-oglu Agaev,(birthdate unknown), from Masalin
District
Elman Mamed-oglu Akhmedov,b. 1961,from Yevlakh District
Elshan Hussein-oglu Akhmedov,b.1974, from Saatlin District
Bakhram AKIF-oglu Giiasov,b. 1972,from Siazan
FAIG Gabil-oglu Guliev,b.1969,from Baku
Enver Asker-oglu Jafarov,b.1972,from Sumgait
Eldar Shahbaba-oglu Mamedov,b.1966,from Baku
Girshad Kniaz-oglu Mamedov,b.1974 from Yevlakh
I thank you for your attention to this matter and look forward
to learning the results of the investigation.
Yours sincerely,
Jeri Laber
Executive Director
_Newsweek_ November 29, 1993, p. 50
_For the past seven months Armenian troops and tanks have swept
across Azerbaijan -- a land grab exceeded only by what the Serbs
have accomplished in Bosnia in the past year...Last month they
pushed south all the way to the Iranian border, driving more
than 60,000 Azerbaijani civilians across the Araks river into
Iran -- and looting and torching vacant villages in their wake._
Christopher Walker, _Armenia_ New York (St. Martin's Press), 1980.
This generally pro-Armenian work contains the following information
of direct relevance to the Nazi Holocaust:
1) Dro (the Butcher), the former dictator of ex-Russian/Soviet Armenia
and the architect of the Armenian genocide of 2.5 million Muslims in
Russian Armenia and Eastern Anatolia, the most respected of Nazi Armenian
leaders, established an Armenian Provisional Republic in Berlin during
World War II;
2) this _provisional government_ fully endorsed and espoused the social
theories of the Nazis, declared themselves and all Armenians to be members
of the Aryan _Super-Race_;
3) they published an Anti-Semitic, racist journal, thereby aligning
themselves with the Nazis and their efforts to exterminate the Jews;
and,
4) they mobilized an Armenian Army of up to 30,000 members which fought
side by side with the Wehrmacht.
_San Francisco Chronicle_ (December 11, 1983)
(Editor's Mailbox - Section B)
_We have first hand information and evidence of Armenian
atrocities against our people (Jews). Members of our family
witnessed the murder of 148 members of our family near Erzurum,
Turkey, by Armenian neighbors, bent on destroying anything and
anybody remotely Jewish and/or Muslim...Armenians were in league
with Hitler in the last war, on his premise to grant themselves
government if, in return, the Armenians would help exterminate
Jews. Armenians were also hearty proponents of the anti-Semitic
acts in league with the Russian Communists._
Signed Elihu Ben Levi, Vacaville, California.
The Armenian publication in Germany, Hairenik (an official mouthpiece
for the ex-Soviet Armenian Government), carried statements as follows:[*]
_Sometimes it is difficult to eradicate these poisonous elements [the
Jews] when they have struck deep root like a chronic disease, and when
it becomes necessary for a people [the Nazis] to eradicate them in an
uncommon method, these attempts are regarded as revolutionary. During
the surgical operation, the flow of blood is a natural thing._[**]
[*] James G. Mandalian, _Dro, Drastamat Kanayan,_ in the 'Armenian
Review,' a Quarterly by the Hairenik Association, Inc., Summer:
June 1957, Vol. X, No. 2-38.
[**] Quoted by James Mandalian: _Who Are The Dashnags?_ Boston,
Hairenik Press, 1944, pp. 13-4.
_These European Armenians, with headquarters in Berlin, appealed
to, and bargained with Hitler's emissaries for an 'independent'
Armenian state. That they had to bootlick Nazi masters goes without
saying. That, as potential officials of a puppet Nazi state, they
would have assumed the infamous roles of the Paveliches, Antonescus,
Lavals, Tisos or Vidkun Quislings was also a foregone conclusion.
Once committed to it, there was no alternative to the price for
'independence' except subservience to Hitler._[*]
[*] Arthur Derounian under the pseudonym 'John Roy Carlson,'
_Armenian Affairs_ a Quarterly Journal of Armenian Studies,
Winter 1949-50, p. 18.
'After all, who remembers today the extermination of the Tartars?'
(Adolf Hitler, August 22, 1939: Ruth W. Rosenbaum)
_The Muslim Holocaust - Musluman Soykirimi_ p. 213.
_Thursday, August 2, 1984 issue of 'Armenian Reporter'_
In fact, by 1942, Nazi Armenians in Europe had established a vast
network of pro-German collaborators, that extended over two continents.
Thousands of Armenians were serving the German army and Waffen-SS in
Russia and Western Europe. Armenians were also involved in espionage and
fifth-column activities for Hitler in the Balkans and Arabian Peninsula.
They were promised an 'independent' state under German 'protection' in
an agreement signed by the 'Armenian National Council.' (A copy of
this agreement can be found in the 'Congressional Record,' November 1,
1945; see Document 1.) On this side of the Atlantic, Nazi Armenians
were aware of their brethrens alliance. They had often expressed
pro-Nazi sentiments until America entered the war.
In 1941, while the Jews were being assembled for their doom in the
Nazi concentration camps, the Nazi Armenians in Germany formed the
first Armenian battalion to fight alongside the Nazis. In 1943, this
battalion had grown into eight battalions of 30,000-strong under the
command of Dro (the butcher), who was the former dictator of x-Soviet/
Russian Armenia and the architect of the cold-blooded genocide of 2.5
million Muslim people between 1914-1920. An Armenian National Council
was formed by the notorious Dashnak Party leaders in Berlin, which was
recognized by the Nazis. Encouraged by this, the Armenians summarily
formed a provisional government that endorsed and espoused fully the
principles of the Nazis and declared themselves as the members of the
Aryan super race and full participants to Hitler's policy of extermination
of the Jews.
This Armenian-Nazi conspiracy against the Jews during WWII was an
"encore" performance staged by the Armenians during WWI when they
exterminated 2.5 million Muslim and Jewish people.
As early as 1934, K. S. Papazian asserted in _Patriotism Perverted_ that
the Armenians
_lean toward Fascism and Hitlerism._[1]
At that time, he could not have foreseen that the Armenians would
actively assume a pro-German stance and even collaborate in World
War II. His book was dealing with the Armenian genocide of 2.5 million
Muslim and Jewish people in Eastern Anatolia and Russian Armenia.
However, extreme rightwing ideological tendencies could be observed
within the Soviet Armenian Government long before the outbreak of the
Second World War.
In 1936, for example, O. Zarmooni of the _Tzeghagrons_ was quoted
in the _Hairenik Weekly_ (an official mouthpiece for the ex-Soviet
Armenian Government):
_The race is force: it is treasure. If we follow history we shall
see that races, due to their innate force, have created the nations
and these have been secure only insofar as they have reverted to
the race after becoming a nation. Today Germany and Italy are
strong because as nations they live and breath in terms of race.
On the other hand, Russia is comparatively weak because she is
bereft of social sanctities._[2]
[1] K. S. Papazian, _Patriotism Perverted_ (Boston, Baikar Press
1934), Preface.
[2] _Hairenik Weekly_ Friday, April 10, 1936, 'The Race is our
Refuge' by O. Zarmooni.
The Armenian fascism traditionally employed extreme means for the
sake of Armenian cause, including massacres and genocide. In World
War I, Russian Armenian Government annihilated the entire Muslim
population of Russian Armenia and exterminated millions of Muslim
and Sephardic Jews in Eastern Anatolia. While having collaborated
with the Nazis against Stalin during the Second World War, Nazi
Armenians changed their policy after Hitler's defeat. They now
backed Stalin's claims on Eastern Turkish provinces, hoping that
these would be annexed to Soviet Armenia and their Muslim population
would be exterminated again. Stalin played on Armenian national
sentiments to enlist the support of Armenians in the USSR and
America for his imperial ambitions.[1] Stalin's ultimatum to the
Turkish government led Truman to formulate his famous Doctrine.
[1] Walter Kolarz, _Religion in the Soviet Union_ (London, Macmillan &
Co Ltd; New York, St Martin's Press 1961), pp. 160-164.
Nazi Germany had shown interest in nationalities, as a tool to
dismember the Russian empire, back in World War I. In the time
between the two World Wars, expelled leaders of Soviet nationalities
were lobbying the capitals of European powers to gain support for
their respective causes. Already in 1936, the SS Headquarters
(Reichssicherheitshauptamt) had created bureaus (Vertrauensstellen)
to contact emigrants and oversee their activities. The Vertrauensstellen
for the Caucasus was led by the Armenian Deirajr Froundjian and the
Georgian Lado Achmeteli.[1]
Shortly after the occupation of Warsaw and Paris, the German Abwehr
(Secret Service) assumed ties with exiled leaders of diverse Soviet
nationalities, among them Russian Armenian Government officials.[2]
One of the leaders of the ex-Soviet Armenian Government, the aforementioned
General Dro (the butcher), who was the chief architect of the Armenian
genocide of 2.5 million Muslim people in Russian Armenia and Eastern
Anatolia between 1914-1920. An Armenian National Council was formed
by the notorious (Drastamat Kanajan) began working relationship with
the Nazis around that time.
[1] Patrick von zur Muhlen (Muehlen), _Zwischen Hakenkreuz und
Sowjetstern_ (Droste Verlag Duesseldorf 1971), p. 37.
[2] Ibid., p. 84.
In April 1942, Hitler was preparing for the invasion of the
Caucasus. A number of Nazi Armenian leaders began submitting
plans to German officials in spring and summer 1942. One of
them was Souren Begzadian Paikhar, son of a former ambassador
of the Armenian Republic in Baku. Paikhar wrote a letter to
Hitler, asking for German support to his Armenian national
socialist movement Hossank and suggesting the creation of an
Armenian SS formation in order
_to educate the youth of liberated Armenia according to the
spirit of the Nazi ideas._
He wanted to unite the Armenians of the already occupied territories
of the USSR in his movement and with them conquer historic Muslim
homeland. Paikhar was confined to serving the Nazis in Goebbels
Propaganda ministry as a speaker for Armenian- and French-language
radio broadcastings.[1] The Armenian-language broadcastings were
produced by yet another Nazi Armenian Viguen Chanth.[2]
[1] Patrick von zur Muhlen (Muehlen), p. 106.
[2] Enno Meyer, A. J. Berkian, _Zwischen Rhein und Arax, 900
Jahre Deutsch-Armenische beziehungen_ (Heinz Holzberg
Verlag-Oldenburg 1988), pp. 124 and 129.
A genocide is a deliberate and organized massacre of people
in an attempt to exterminate a race. This is the worst crime
in history. It happened to the Muslims in Russian Armenia and
Eastern Anatolia. 2.5 million Muslims were killed by Armenians
in the worst ways imaginable. It is sickening to think that
the human race is capable of such actions, but there is no
denying the fact that the Armenian genocide of 2.5 million
Muslims happened.
Furthermore, the establishment of Armenian units in the German
army was favored by General Dro (the Butcher), the architect
of the Armenian genocide of 2.5 million Muslim people. He played
an important role in the establishment of the Nzi Armenian _legions_
without assuming any official position. His views were represented
by his men in the respective organs. An interesting meeting took
place between Dro and Reichsfuehrer-SS Heinrich Himmler toward the
end of 1942. Dro discussed matters of collaboration with Himmler
and after a long conversation, asked if he could visit POW camp
close to Berlin. Himmler provided Dro with his private car.[1]
A minor problem was that some of the Soviet nationals were not
_Aryans_ but _subhumans_ according to the official Nazi philosophy.
As such, they were subject to German racism. However, Armenians
were the least threatened and indeed most privileged. In August
1933, Armenians had been recognized as Aryans by the Bureau of
Racial Investigation in the Ministry for Domestic Affairs.
[1] Meyer, Berkian, ibid., pp. 112-113.
Altogether 30,000 Nazi Armenians served in various units in
the German Wehrmacht, according to Ara J. Berkian. 14,000
in predominantly Armenian army units, 6,000 in German army
units, 8,000 in various working units and 2,000 in the
Waffen-SS.[1]
A number of these Nazi Armenians were volunteers from France and
Greece who had chosen to commit themselves to the extermination
of the European Jewry. Derounian says that
_Nazi Armenians from France bore the mark 'Legion Armenienne.'_[2]
That Nazi Armenians like Dro 'the Butcher', Armenian architect
of the genocide of 2.5 million Muslim people, and Nezhdeh sided
with the Germans probably had an impact on the decision of
Armenians who overwhelmingly opted for armed service.
[1] Enno Meyer, A. J. Berkian, _Zwischen Rhein und Arax, 900
Jahre Deutsch-Armenische beziehungen_ (Heinz Holzberg
Verlag-Oldenburg 1988), pp. 118/119.
[2] John Roy Carlson (Arthur Derounian), ibid., p. 19.
In fall 1942, the Armenian infantry battalions 808 and 809 were formed,
to be followed by battalions 810, 812 and 813 in spring 1943. In the
second half of 1943 infantry battalions 814, 815 and 816 were created.
These battalions together with other indigenous Caucasian units were
attached to the infantry division 162. Also attached to ID 162 were
the field battalions II/9, I/125 and I/198 which were formed between
May 1942 and May 1943. Altogether twelve Armenian battalions served
the Nazi army, if battalion II/73, which was not employed at any time,
is to be included.[1] Most battalions were commanded by Nazi Armenian
officers. Armenians wore German uniforms with an armband in the Dashnag
colours red-blue-orange and the inscription _Armenien._
[1] Joachim Hoffmann, _Dies Ostlegionen 1941-1943, Turkotataren,
Kaukasier und Wolgafinned im deutschen Heer_ (Verlag Rombach
Freiburg 1976), p. 172.
The Armenian SS unit was formed following a directive of Himmler in
the beginning of December 1944.[1] The Armenian Liaison Staff actively
recruited volunteers[2] and by February 1945 a cavalry formation of
twenty thousand Armenians was integrated into the larger Caucasian
Waffen-SS unit. The Armenian SS formation was employed last in
Klagenfurt.[3] In addition to this exclusively Armenian unit, Nazi
Armenians also served in the thirty eight other SS divisions, one
of them even in the elite _Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler._[4]
[1] Meyer, Berkian, ibid., pp. 136-137.
[2] United States National Archives, T-175, Roll 167,
pp 2700157/2700158, SS-Headquarters, Amtsgruppe D - Oststelle,
see _Documents 3 and 4._
[3] Georg Tessin, _Verbaende und Truppen der deutschen Wehrmacht und
Waffen-SS im zweiten Weltkrieg 1939-1945,_ (Frankfurt am Main
1965-1980), Volume 14, Armenian Legion/Waffen SS.
[4] Meyer, Berkian, ibid., p. 119.
Derounian says that
_Greece was honeycombed with Armenians serving as Nazi spies._[1]
Many Nazi Armenians were arrested by the British and sentenced by
the Greek government as collaborators in espionage.[2] In Rumania
many Nazi Armenians were found in Antonescu's Iron Guard during
arrest of members after the war. Bulgaria was the operational base
of Tzeghagrons-founder Garagin Nezhdeh, who commanded a network of
espionage from there.
[1] John Roy Carlson (Arthur Derounian), ibid., p. 20.
[2] Meyer, Berkian, ibid., p. 150.
In Russia General Dro (the Butcher), the architect of the Muslim
Holocaust in ex-Soviet/Russian Armenia and Eastern Anatolia, was
working closely with the German Secret Service. He entered the war
zone with his own men and acquired important intelligence about the
Soviets. His experience with the Muslim Holocaust in ex-Soviet/Russian
Armenia and Eastern Anatolia made him an invaluable source for the
Germans.[1]
[1] Meyer, Berkian, ibid., p. 113; Patrick von zur Muehlen,
ibid., p. 84.
Numerous articles in major newspapers (London Times) and periodicals
(Newsweek) during the war, had suggested the existence of a significant
collaboration between Armenians and the Nazis. Arthur Derounian deserves
credit for being the first person to deal with this issue extensively.
Derounian's motives were twofold: his deeply held democratic convictions
gave him a sense of duty and he felt obliged to shed light on this yet
another dark chapter of Armenian history. Concurrently, Derounian embarked
on what one would call _crisis control_ or face-saving. In order to
forestall any potential attacks on the larger Armenian community in
the United States, he marginalized collaboration as deplorable but
insignificant.[1]
[1] John Roy Carlson (real name Arthur Derounian), _The Plotters_
E. P. Dutton & Company, Inc., New York 1946, p. 182.
Also, it is not surprising that the Armenians collaborated with the Nazis.
_Wholly opportunistic the Armenians have been variously pro-Nazi,
pro-Russia, pro-Soviet Armenia, pro-Arab, pro-Jewish, as well as
anti-Jewish, anti-Zionist, anti-Communist, and anti-Soviet - whichever
was expedient._[1]
[1] John Roy Carlson (Arthur Derounian), _Cairo to Damascus_
Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1951, p. 438.
_Mitteilungsblatt_ Berlin, December 1939, Nr. 2 and 5-6
Yet another historical fact: a fact that for years has been deliberately
forgotten, concealed, and wiped from memory - the fact of Armenian-Nazi
collaboration.
A magazine called Mitteilungsblatt der Deutsch-Armenischen Gesselschaft
is the clearest and most definite proof of this collaboration. The
magazine was first published in Berlin in 1938 during Nazi rule of
Germany and continued publication until the end of 1944. Even the
name of the magazine, which implies a declaration of Armenian-Nazi
cooperation, is attention-getting.
This magazine, every issue of which proves the collaboration, is
historically important as documentary evidence. It is a heap of
writing that should be an admonition to world opinion and to all
mankind.
In Nazi Germany, Armenians were considered to be an Aryan race and
certain political, economic, and social rights were thus granted to
them. They occupied positions in public service and were partners in
Nazi practices. The whole world of course knows what awaited those
who were not considered _Aryan_ and what befell them.
The Tzeghagrons (Armenian Racial Patriots -- Nazi Armenians) was the
youth organization of the Armenians. It was based in Boston (where
Muslim/Jewish Holocaust apologists of SDPA/Armenian Church are located)
but had followers in Armenian colonies all over the world. Literally
Tzeghagron means _to make a religion of one's race._ The architect
of the Armenian Racial Patriots was Garegin Nezhdeh, a Nazi Armenian
who became a key leader of collaboration with Hitler in World War II.
In 1933, he had been invited to the United States by the Central
Committee of the Armenians to inspire and organize the American-Armenian
youth. Nezhdeh succeeded in unifying many local Armenian youth groups
in the Tzeghagrons. Starting with 20 chapters in the initial year, the
Tzeghagrons grew to 60 chapters and became the largest and most powerful
Nazi Armenian organization. Nezhdeh also provided the Tzeghagrons with
a philosophy:
_The Racial Religious beliefs in his racial blood as a deity.
Race above everything and before everything. Race comes first._[1]
[1] Quoted in John Roy Carlson (real name Arthur Derounian),
_Armenian Affairs_ Winter, 1949-50, p. 19, footnote.
The Armenians were deeply anti-semitic as well. In the May 10,
1936 edition of _Hairenik Weekly_ (an official mouthpiece for
the ex-Soviet Armenian Government) the vice-mayor of Bucharest,
Rumania is quoted as saying:
_The Armenians helped us not to become the slaves of the Jewish
elements in our country._
In another edition, an author named Captain George Haig writes:
_And the type of Jew who is imported to Palestine...is not anything
to be proud about. Their loose morals, and other vices were
unknown to the Arabs prior to Balfour Declaration, on top of
all communist activities were the cause of most of the Arab
criticism._[1]
[1] Captain George Haig, _The Case of Palestine_ in Hairenik
Weekly, Friday, September 25, 1936.
As amply admitted by the ex-Soviet Armenian Government,
the Armenians were also fascist. Before Pearl Harbor,
the Dashnak daily _Hairenik_ [an official mouthpiece
for the ex-Soviet Armenian Government] (not to be confused
with the Tzeghagrons _Hairenik Weekly_) expressed pro-Nazi
sentiments:
_And came Adolf Hitler, after herculean struggles. He spoke
to the racial heart strings of the German, opened the
fountain of his national genius, strock down the spirit
of defeatism...At no period since the World War had Berlin
conducted so realistic, well organized, and planned policy
as now, since Hitler's assumption to power...And whatever
others may think concerning Hitlerism and Fascism as a
system of Government, it is proved that they have revitalized
and regenerated the two states, Germany and Italy._[1]
[1] _Hairenik_ official organ of the Dashnaktsuitune, Sept.
17, 1936; quoted in John Roy Carlson (see endnote 1), p. 21.
During World War II, while the Turkish Government was giving
asylum to many Jews fleeing from Hitler's tyranny, anti-Semitism
engulfed the Armenian circles in the Nazi-occupied territories.
A publication of the Armenian Information Service in New York,
entitled Dashnak Collaboration With The Nazi Regime, purports
to show that Armenian sympathies with racism had reached dangerous
proportions. The following quotation from the Armenian daily
Hairenik of 19, 20 and 21 August 1936 exposes something much
more than prejudice and bigotry:
_Jews being the most fanatical nationalists and race-worshippers...
are compelled to create an atmosphere..of internationalism and
world citizenship in order to preserve their race...As the
British use battleships to occupy lands..Jews use internationalism
or communism as a weapon..Sometimes it is difficult to eradicate
these poisonous elements when they have struck deep root like
a chronic disease. And when it becomes necessary for a people
to eradicate them...these attempts are regarded revolutionary.
During a surgical operation, the flow of blood is a natural
thing...Under such conditions, dictatorships seem to have a role
of saviour [1]._
[1] Quoted by James Mandalian: _Who are the Dashnags?_ Boston,
Hairenik Press, 1944, pp. 13-4.
In May 1935 the Armenians of Bucharest attacked the Jews of that
city, while the Greeks of Salonika attacked the Jews in the August
of the same year. During World War II, Armenian volunteers, under
the wings of Hitler's Germany, were used in rounding up Jews and
other ''undesirables'' destined for the Nazi concentration camps.
The Armenians also published a German-language magazine, with fascist
and anti-Semitic tendencies, supporting Nazi doctrines directed to
the extermination of 'inferior' races [1].
This is confirmed by Armenophil Christopher J. Walker, who admits
that the Armenians collaborated with the Nazis. According to him,
members of the Dashnak Party, then living in the occupied areas,
including a number of prominent persons, entertained pro-Axis
sympathies. A report in an American magazine went so far as to
claim that the Nazis had picked on the Dashnaktsutiun to do fifth-
column work, promising the party an autonomous state for its
cooperation. Walker goes on to claim that relations between the
Nazis and the Dashnaks living in the occupied areas were close and
active. On 30 December 1941 an Armenian battalion was formed by a
decision of the Army Command (Wehrmacht), known as the 'Armenian
812th Battalion'. It was commanded by Dro, and was made up of a
small number of committed recruits, and a larger number of Armenians.
Early on, the total number of recruits was 8,000; this number later
grew to 30,000. The 812th Battalion was operational in Crimea and
the North Caucasus.(These are the dates and numbers given by Walker[3].)
A year later, on 15 December 1942, an Armenian National Council
was granted official recognition by Alfred Rosenberg, the German
Minister of the occupied areas. The Council's president was
Professor Ardashes Abeghian, its vice-president Abraham Giulkhandanian,
and it numbered among its members Nzhdeh and Vahan Papazian. From that
date until the end of 1944 it published a weekly journal, Armenien,
edited by Viken Shant (the son of Levon), who also broadcast on Radio
Berlin. The whole idea was to prove to the Germans that the Armenians
were 'Aryans'. With the aid of Dr. Paul Rohrbach they seemed to have
achieved this as the Nazis did not persecute the Armenians in the
occupied lands [2].
[1] Turkkaya Ataov: _Armenian Extermination of the Jews and Muslims_
1984, p. 91.
[2] C.J. Walker: _Armenia_ London, 1980, pp. 356-8.
_Emperor Romanus I Lecapenus, in about 935, again ordered the
forcible conversion of all the Jews of Byzantium, leading to the
murder of hundreds of Jews and the desecration of many synagogues
throughout the empire. All the while Jews came under increasingly
savage attack by Byzantine popular preachers and writers as well as
by officials trying to stir the populace in support of the Crusading
knights coming from the West to wrest the Holy Land from the "infidel
Muslims". As a result, Emperor Andronicus I Comnenus (1183-85) again
attempted to convert the Jews to Christianity, though by persuasion
and argument rather than force. When Crusaders passed through
Constantinople on their way to the Holy Land, they invariably were
assigned to camp next to the Jewish quarters, particularly that
adjacent to the Galata Tower, and usually spent most of their spare
time attacking and killing Jews and stealing their properties. At the
same time they stirred local populace to similar activities. It was
at this time, also, that Constantinople's Armenians joined the Greeks
in attacking Judaism for the first time. [1]_
[1] Yvonne Friedman, 'Antijudischen Polemik des 12 jahrhunderts',
Kairos XXVI/1-2 (1984), 80-88.
''Blood libel accusations were made against Jews by Ottoman Christian
subjects starting in the sixteenth century, most frequently in the
Arab provinces, first at Jerusalem in 1546. The most famous Christian
assault on Ottoman Jews in medieval times came in the central Anatolian
town of Amasya some time between 1530 and 1540, when a blood-libel
accusation against local Jews was spread by local Armenians who said
that an Armenian woman had seen Jews slaughter a young Armenian boy
and use his blood at the feast of Passover. Several days of rioting
and pillaging and attacks on Jews followed...Later, however, the
Armenian boy who supposedly had been murdered was found and the
Ottoman governor punished the Armenian accusers, though nothing could
be done about the Jews who had suffered.''[1]
''There were literally thousands of incidents in subsequent years,
invariably resulting from accusations spread among Greeks and Armenians
by word of mouth, or published in their newspapers, often by Christian
financiers and merchants who were anxious to get the Jews out of the
way, resulting in isolated and mob attacks on Jews, and burning of
their shops and homes [2]. The attacks were brutal and without mercy.
Women, children, and aged Jewish men were frequently attacked, beaten
and often killed.''[3]
[1] Stanford J. Shaw, ''Christian Anti-Semitism in the Ottoman Empire'',
Belleten C. LIV, 68, p.1103 (1991).
[2] Abraham Ben-Yakob (Jerusalem), ''The Immigration of Iraki Jews
to the Holy Land in the 19th Century'', paper delivered to the
First International Congress for the Study of Sephardic and
Oriental Judaism, 27 June 1978.
[3] Stanford J. Shaw, ''Christian Anti-Semitism in the Ottoman Empire'',
Belleten C. LIV, 68, p.1129 (1991)
By Andrew Sackser:
Throughout history the children of Israel have suffered at hands
of others. A people set apart from their neighbors by their
faith, countless. Jews have often had to pay for this faith with
their lives. There was, however, one haven where Jews did not
suffer the large-scale persecution characterizing their entire
existence. This haven was Turkey. For over five hundred years
Jews have flourished there, enjoying relatively uninterrupted
freedom and safety that has only been rivaled in America. This
year marks the quincentennial anniversary of the ingathering of
Jews to Turkey, and highlights one of the brighter chapters in
Jewish history.
...
Source: HIRHURIM - The Jewish Magazine of Brendeis University
(Massachusetts). Vol. 1, No: 2, Spring 1992
Source: Doc. Dr. Azmi Suslu, "Ermenilerin Yaptiklari Katliamlar (Les
Massacres Commis Par Les Armeniens)," Ankara Universitesi Basimevi,
Ankara, 1986.
p. 1.
Fotograf: Ermeni ceteleri tarafindan 25 Nisan'da Subatan koyunde karinlari
yarilip cocuklari cikarilan kadinlar ve cocuklari.
Fotograf: Mus ve Bitlis'te kurulup Rus ordusuna onculuk eden ve Turklere
karsi giristikleri mezalimle taninan Ermeni cetelerinden bir
grup (Ermeni Amal ve Harekat-i Ihtilaliyyesi-Tesavir ve Vesaik.
Osmanlica, Almanca, Ingilizce ve Fransizca aciklamali Album,
nu. 2, s. 58.)
p. 26.
"Bu koyler son derecede acinacak haldedir. Gidip gelmeleriyle Ermeni
ihtilalcileri, bunlara kitlik getirmislerdir."
p. 40.
Rus Generali Mayewski:
"Her konuda oldugu gibi, ilkbaharda isyan faaliyetlerinin hazirliklari
da hizlanmistir. Hatta, sehrin yakinlarindaki birkac Turk'un katledildigi
ve vucutlarinin parca parca dograndigi gibi bazi cinayetlerden bile
soz edildigi duyulmaya baslanmistir. Ozellikle bu tur cinayetlerin
sorusturulmadigini goren isyancilar gunden gune cesaretlenmislerdir."
p. 42.
Van Ingiltere konsolosu Williams:
"Ekselanslarini haberdar etmekten seref duyarim ki, bu bolgenin durumu
arzu edildigi sekilde degildir. Ermeni isyancilari iki defa Muslumanlara
saldirmislardir; birincisinde uc Turk oldurulmus, iki kisi yaralanmis;
ikincisinde ise iki-uc kisi oldurulmustur. Her iki olayda da vucutlar
vahsice parcalanmistir...Her halukarda bu ahmak ve rezil Ermeniler olayin
musebbipleridirler"
p. 54.
Rus Generali Mayewski:
"12-13 Eylul'de Hincak cetesi ortaya cikmistir. Bu cete Van sehrine Ovannis
koyunden saldirmistir. Gectikleri heryeri tahrip etmis olan bu ceteciler,
Ermeni mahallesinin bahcelerine kadar ilerlemisler;..."
Onsozunde Yunus Zeyrek imzasi ile $unlar yazili:
''Birinci Cihan Harbi'nin son yillarinda Ermenilerin Turklere
yaptigi mezalimi yerinde tespit icin yabanci gazetecilerin de
bulundugu bir heyet kuruldu. Ahmed Refik Bey bu heyetin reisiydi.
Alman yazari Vays, Avusturyali yazar Dr.I$tayn'tan mute$ekkil
heyet 17 Nisan - 20 Mayis 1918 tarihleri arasinda bir kisim $ark
vilayetlerini dola$ti. I$te elinizdeki eser, bu seyahatin
mahsuludur....Osmanlinin zeval buldugu zamanlarda Moskof himaye-
sindeki Ermenilerin yaptigi $eni cinayetleri bizzat gorur gibi
oluyoruz. Bazen hakimane bir tavir takinan Ruslarin, katil
Ermeni ceteba$larini madalyalarla taltif ettikleri de bilinen
hakikatler arasindadir....''
Ahmed Refik, 'Kafkas Yollarinda Hatiralar ve Tahassusler,' (1919).
Birinci Baski, Agustos 1981, Kultur Bakanligi Yayinlari: 473.
pp. 36-37:
''Erzincan, 2 Mayis:
...Ruslarin geri cekilmesini muteakip Ermenilerin zulmettikleri
yerlerden biri de Erzincan. Vaktiyle yirmi bin nufusu ihtiva eden
kasabada $imdi uc-dort bin ki$i bile yok. Ruslarin istilasi esnasinda
kasabada kalanlar fakir ve aciz halk. Bunlarin da yedi yuze yakin
kismi Ermeniler tarafindan kesilmi$, oldurulmu$, yakilmi$ ve kuyulara
atilmi$. Kasaba Osmanli ordusu tarafindan $ubatta i$gal olunmu$.
Olulerin toplanmasi hala bitmiyor. Bu feci kan ve sefalet manzarasi
kar$isinda karli daglar, bahara hazirlanan ovalar, henuz ciceklenen
agaclar sessiz ve cansiz. Firat, yine sessiz, mutevazi ve pur-vekar
yoluna devam ediyor. Ku$lar yine harabeler ortasinda bezgin ve mahzun
du$unuyor. Bedbaht Erzincanlilarin yanik, muessir, kurdi makamlarla
soyledikleri turkuler $imdi hakikaten yerini bulmu$. Bugun o turkuler
soylendigi, o hazin nagmeler yurtlarina donen felaketzedeler lisanindan
i$itildigi zaman muteessir olmamak kabil degil:
Vardim ki yurdumdan ayak gocurmu$
Leyla gitmi$, issiz kalmi$ otagi
Camlar $ikest olmu$, meyler dokulmu$
Sakiler meclisten kesmi$ ayagi
Filhakika Erzincan'da tum otaglar issiz kalmi$. Butun camlar $ikest
olmu$. Butun bahceler peri$an. Butun gonuller cok kederli:
Vardim ki baglarda bagban aglar
Sunbuller peri$an guller kan aglar
$eyda bulbul terk edeli bu bagi
Kangi dagda bulsam ben o marali
Kangi colde sursem ce$m-i gazali
Yavrusun yitirmi$ ceylan misali
Gezer colden cole yoktur duragi.
Halk, ac ve sefil. Yollarda, omrunu muharebelerde ve gurbetlerde
geciren bu halk zaten ne zaman saadet yuzu gormu$!...Kadin lisanindan
soylenen turkulerde bile harpten ve ayriliktan ba$ka bir $ey i$itilmiyor:
Dersim'in bayir ba$i
Yikilmi$ dagi ta$i
Agamdan ayrilali
Akiyor gozum ya$i
Durmuyor gozum ya$i...''
pp. 40-41:
''Erzurum, 6 Mayis:
Erzincan, issizligiyla kalbe kasvet veriyor. Bu yangin yerlerinden
bir an evvel kurtulmak adeta bir saadet. Yola ciktigimiz zaman, aclik
manzaralari, sefaletler, Ermeniler tarafindan kesilmi$ ba$lar, parca-
lanmi$ vucutlar, bir turlu gozlerimizin onunden gitmiyor. Erzincan
ovasi, karli daglar arasinda kurumu$ otlari, ciplak sogutleriyle
nihayetsiz ve geni$. Yollardan kalkan tozlar gogusleri tikiyor. Hic
bir guzellik, hicbir cicek kalbe ferahlik vermiyor. Ovanin iki tarafina
dogru yukselen, karli daglarla nihayetlenen meyiller uzerinde buyuk
buyuk koyler var. Fakat bunlar ciplak ve siyah agaclariyla buyuk
lekeler te$kil eden yangin yerlerinden ba$ka bir $ey degil. Yanmami$,
yikilmami$, kirilmami$ hic bir $ey yok. Her taraf issiz. Bu baglarin
sahipleri, bu koylerin sakinleri nerede? Sukut!...''
Ahmed Refik, 'Kafkas Yollarinda Hatiralar ve Tahassusler,' (1919).
Birinci Baski, Agustos 1981, Kultur Bakanligi Yayinlari: 473.
pp. 47-48:
''(Erzurum, 9 Mayis 1918:)
..Erzurum ahalisi gayet zeki ve ihsana deger verir. Sozleri duzgun.
Esnafi bile irfan sahibi. Onlarin size iltifat icin:
--Begim, gozun ustune gele!
deyi$leri var ki, bu basit cumlelerdeki teslimiyetkarane ve
samimane edalarina kar$i Anadolu'nun bu serhad halkina kalben
bir hurmet beslememek mumkun degil. Rus istilasi altinda silahsiz
ya$ayan, Ermeni mezalimine cocuklarini, erlerini, hatta kadinlarini
kurban veren, i$te bu halk...
Erzurum, bir harabe gibi. Camiler, ambar vazifesi gormekle
kurtulabilmi$. Mamafih bunlarin da mustesnasi var. Lala Mustafa
Pa$a Camii, Mimar Sinan'in bu guzide eseri, butun muzeyyenatindan
(suslerinden) mahrum. Pencerelerinin etrafini susleyen renkli
ciniler bile sokulmu$. Erzurum'un bu kismi kamilen harap. Hukumet
dairesi, beylik yerler dumandan simsiyah kesilmi$, korkunc bir
iskelet halinde, dort duvardan ba$ka hic bir $ey degil. Kilise
Meydani civari, Islam mahalleleri yikilmi$ ve yakilmi$...
Ruslarin cekilmesi uzerine $ehir kamilen Ermenilerin elinde kalmi$.
I$te butun zulumler, yanginlar ve facialar o zaman ba$lami$. Yalniz
Erzurum sokaklarinda toplanan Islam na$i (cesedi) dort binden fazla.
Evlere doldurulup yakilanlar, yol yaptirmak bahanesiyle uzaklara
goturulup oldurulenler bu hesaba dahil degil.
Erzurum'da yakilan binalar hesapsiz. Ermeniler hemen her tarafi
yakmi$lar, yikmi$lar...Daha ziyade mudafaada bulunamiyacaklarini
anladiklari zaman pe$lerinde olum ve ate$ten murekkep bir harabe
birakarak kacmi$lar.''
IHA (9 Temmuz), Erzurum:
''Erzurum'un Pasinler Ilcesi'ne bagli Timar koyunde,
Prof.Dr. Enver Konukcu ba$kanligindaki 20 ki$ilik
bir heyet tarafindan 350 ki$ilik bir toplu mezar
ortaya cikarildi. Iki yildan beri tespit edilmeye
cali$ilan toplu mezarda, Ermeniler tarafindan
olduruldukten sonra birbirinin uzerine atilarak
gomuldukleri anla$ilan 350 Turk'un iskeletleri
arasinda ziynet e$yalari, kismen yanmi$ Kur'an-i
Kerim'ler, Osmanlica kitaplar ile 3 adet de altin
bulundu. Katliamdan sag olarak kurtulmayi ba$aran
84 ya$indaki Ethem Aydin kazi boyunca gozya$larini
tutamadi.''
Extracts from a letter dated December 11, 1983, published in the San
Francisco Chronicle.
"We have first hand information and evidence of Armenian atrocities
against our people (Jews). Members of our family witnessed the
murder of 148 members of our family near Erzurum, Turkey, by Armenian
neighbors, bent on destroying anything and anybody remotely Jewish
and/or Muslim. Armenians were in league with Hitler in the last war,
on his premise to grant themselves government if, in return, the
Armenians would help exterminate Jews. Armenians were also hearty
proponents of the anti-Semitic acts in league with the Russian
Communists."
Signed Elihu Ben Levi, Vacaville, California.
A. Alper Gazigiray, "Muslim Archival Material on the Genocide Perpetrated
by the Armenians Against the Muslim people in Eastern Anatolia," Gozen
Kitabevi, Istanbul, 1982.
pp. 455-456.
Picture: Corpses of Muslim children butchered by Armenians.
"Simdi Savur'da yasayan memleketi Bitlis olan 40 yasinda Isa oglu
Haydar'in yeminli ifadesi:
1915 yilinin subat ayinda ailemle Bitlis'in bir koyu olan Tako'da
bulunuyordum. Yolda Bitlis halkindan bir kafile gorunce, gidislerinin
sebebini sordum. Bunlar bana sehrin ansizin Rus ve Ermeni birlikleri
tarafindan basildigini, bu birliklerin daha ziyade Ermeniler tarafindan
teskil edildigini, rastladiklari Islamlari kadin, erkek ve cocuk
ayirmaksizin sungu darbeleriyle oldurduklerini soylediler.
Haber salmam uzerine Bitlis'in Kersan mahallesinde oturan Suleyman
oglu Ali asagidakileri anlatti. Kardeslerim Ismail ve Halil kapilarinin
esiginde Ermeniler tarafindan oldurulmuslerdi. Haci Alinin oglu
kayinbiraderim Yusuf'u oldurmusler ve halasi Sakir'in kizi olan
Mercan rezilane suikastler maksadiyla cete tarafindan goturulmustur.
Hasta olan komsum Seyh Harzan Ahmet yataginda karisi Semo ve
hizmetcilerinden bir tanesi oldurulmustu. Seyhi ziyarete gelmis olan
Mustafa oglu Recep'in de mukadderati ayni olmustur. Ismail Kilincizade
oglu Hasan kendisinden buyuk bir fidye alinmasina ragmen Suleyman
Yusufzadenin evinin yakininda oldurulmustur. Oglu Izzet ve Haci
Nasullah'in oglunu kasatura darbeleriyle oldurmuslerdir. 80 lik bir
kadin olan Ahlatli Niger ve Tero'un hasta karisi Bezirgan Cilvinzade
Ismail oglu Halil, Ahmet oglu Mehmet, kardesim Mithat Efendi ve amcasi
50 yaslarinda olan Seyh Hafi kar ve sogugun siddetine ragmen acik
bas ve yalinayakla angarya yapmaya ve uzak mesafelere agir yukler
tasimaya mecbur edilmislerdi. Bunun uzerine Bitlis'e gitmeye cesaret
edemiyerek koyume, Yako'ya dondum."
p. 458.
"Hafif Suvari Alayi Komutani Nuh Beyin ifadesi:
1915 Subat ayinda Rus saldirisi esnasinda Mus vadisinde bulunan
bilhassa Kolisek, Zikzak, Varsad, Abzit, Kurni, Pav, Capkis, Agudat,
Sipahiyan, Suspiret, Til, Tekmal, Norkak koyleri tamamiyle yikildi..."
Source: _Russian View on the Genocide Committed by the Armenians against
the Muslims_ by Doc. Dr. Azmi Suslu, Ankara Universitesi Basimevi,
Ankara, 1987.
p. 38.
Picture: Ermeni mezalimine ugrayan masum Turk halkinin katlinden
sonra karlar uzerine terk edilen cesetleri.
"Ermeni asilli istihkam subayi Morozof Meguerditche'in raporu
Bu dakikadan itibaren hicbir taraftan emir verilmeksizin katliam
basladi. Katliama koylulerle birlikte muntazam askerler de istirak
etmekteydi. Katliam en cok Ermeni kilisesi civarinda icra edilmistir.
Yapilan nasihatlara ragmen katliamin onune gecmek mumkun olmamistir.
Neticede yaklasik olarak 250 ile 300 Musluman katlolunmustur."
"Erzincan bolgesinde binlerce musluman, hicbir ayirim yapmadan Ermeniler
tarafindan vahsice oldurulmustur. Nitekim Osmanli ordusu Erzincan'a
geldigi zaman Ordu Komutani'nin 16 Subat'da Baskomutanlik Vekaletine
yazdigi rapor aynen soyledir:
'Cardakli bogazindan Erzincan'a kadar olan butun koyleri, hatta bir
kulube bile saglam kalmamak sartiyla, tahrip edilmis gordum.
Bahcelerin agaclari kesilmis, koylerden bir fert sag kalmamistir.
Ermenilerin Erzincan'da yaptiklari facialari dunya tarihi bugune
kadar kaydetmemistir. Uc gunden beri Ermeniler tarafindan oldurulup
meydanda kalan Islam cenazeleri toplattirilmaktadir. Sehid edilmis
olan bu bigane ve masum halk arasinda memeden kesilmemis cocuklar,
doksan yasini ikmal etmis ihtiyarlar, parcalanmis kadinlar vardir.'"
Source: _Russian View on the Genocide Committed by the Armenians against
the Muslims_ by Doc. Dr. Azmi Suslu, Ankara Universitesi Basimevi,
Ankara, 1987.
pp. 10-13.
Picture: Ermeniler tarafindan katledilen yakinlarinin basinda aglayan
masum Turkler.
"Rusya'nin Bitlis Konsolosu'nun raporu
Bitlis vilayetinin dikkat ceken ozelliklerinden biri de, Ermeni
ihtilal cemiyeti olan Tasnaksutyun'un bu vilayette daimi surette
faaliyet gostermesidir...Simdi adigecen cemiyetin Sasun, Mus
sancagi, Mus ovasi, Bulanik, Ahlat ve Malazgirt kazalariyla,
Bitlis sehrindeki uyelerinin sayisi 100,000 kisiye ulasmistir.
Bu teskilatin vilayet icindeki baslica reisi Karmen (Carmen),
diger adiyla Karnik'tir. Tasnaksutyun cemiyetine girmeden once
Karnik bir papazdi. Asil adi Dacad Vartabed (Dadjad Vartabete)
imis...Karmen'in Mus sehrindeki yardimcilari ise, ilk basta
Simon Zavaryan ve daha sonra Agop Hadoyan, Mecobuluyan ve
Simbat'tir. Bulanik kazasindaki Hupe (Houppe), Karmen'in vekili
Museg (Mochehe), Sasun'da Manuk, Mus ovasinda Iso Kumuslu (Isso
Koumssel) ve iki Misaklar'dir.
Reisleriyle birlikte bu 100,000 uyenin girdigi cemiyetin merkezi
idaresi Mus sehrinde yapilmaktadir. Bu teskilat, 20 komiteye, 100
alt komiteye ve 8,000 gruba ayrilmaktadir. Binaenaleyh her gruba
10 ila 12 uye dahildir. 100 ila 1,000 Ermeni bir alt komite ve
1,000 ila 5,000 kisi de bir komite teskil ederler. Buyuk merkez
komitesi daimi surette Mus sehrinde bulunmakta ve Mus sehri ile
Mus ovasi, Sasun, Bulanik ve Malazgirt kazalariyla Bitlis sehri
ve civarindaki Tasnaksutyun subeleri adigecen merkeze tabi
bulunmaktadir. Tasnaksutyun cemiyetine dahil bulunan uyelerden
her biri her ay cemiyet kasasina on paradan bir kurusa kadar
bir meblag odemeye mecburdur. Bundan dolayi cemiyetin yalniz
Bitlis vilayetinde senelik 1,000 ila 1,500 liralik gelire sahip
oldugu zannedilmektedir.
Bu surette her grup ve komitenin topladigi akce Cenevre'deki
Tasnaksutyun'un Garb Kalemi'ne gonderilmekte ve bu kalemce
Isvicre Tasnakist Hey'et-i Aliyyesi mukarreratina gore
sarfedilmektedir.
Komite ve alt komitelerin baskanlari ve Osmanli askerleriyle
savasmis 'eski' ihtilalcilerde Revolver ve Miravn, Musin ve
Berdan sisteminde tufeklerle luzumu kadar fisek vardir.
Tasnaksutyun cemiyetinin diger uyelerine gelince, bunlarin
elinde Berdanga, Kerd (Kramnofmas/Kramnovka), Martin ve Gra
(Gras) gibi degisik sistemlerden olmak uzere 600-800 tufek
vardir. Bu tufekler eskiden koylerde toprak altinda muhafaza
edilirdi. Simdi oralardan cikarilmistir.
...Tasnaklarin hareketlerine karsi Mus ovasindaki Kirtakum
koyu ahalisi de siddetle memnuniyetsizliklerini beyan etmislerdir.
Bu sene gerek Mus ve gerek Bitlis memurlarina kendilerinden
sozde mektepler icin para toplayan ve ayni zamanda silahlanmalarini
tavsiye eden Karmen aleyhinde sikayette bulunmuslardir. Her halde
Tasnakcilarin mektep ve egitim konusunda yapacaklari faaliyetleri,
diger faaliyetlerini gizlemektedir."
Source: _Russian View on the Genocide Committed by the Armenians against
the Muslims_ by Doc. Dr. Azmi Suslu, Ankara Universitesi Basimevi,
Ankara, 1987.
p. I.
Picture: Isyanci Ermeni ceteleri tarafindan vahsice sehid edilmis olan
kadin ve cocuk cesetleri sedyelerde.
p. 8.
"Birinci Dunya Savasi basinda Car II. Nicolas'in Ermenilere hitaben
yayinladigi beyannamede soyle bir ifade kullanilmistir:
'Ermeniler!
Dogudan batiya kadar buyuk Rusya'nin butun ahalisi davetimi buyuk
bir saygiyla kabul etti. Ermeniler, bircogunuzun altinda ezildigi
ve bugun ezilmege devam ettigi bes asirlik istibdattan sonra
hurriyete sahip olacaginiz saat geldi. Ruslar, Ermeni evladini
buyuk bir iftiharla hatirliyor. Lazaroflar, Melikoflar ve benzer
Ermeniler Slav kardeslerinin yaninda vatanin gelismesi icin
savasmislardi. Asirlardan beri devam eden sadakatiniz icin bu buyuk
gunde de butun vazifelerinizi sarsilmaz bir iman ve kanaatle ifa
edeceginize ve gercek davamizin ve silahlarimizin kesin zafere
ulasmasi icin calisacaginiza bir delildir.
Ermeniler! Carlar Hukumetleri altinda kan kardeslerinizle birleserek
nihayet hurriyet ve adaletin nimetlerine kavusacaksiniz' (Ermeni
amal ve harekat-i ihtilaliyyesi, tesavir ve vesaik, Osmanlica,
Almanca, Ingilizce ve Fransizca Album, nu. 2, s. 36).
Ihtilal sonrasinda ise, bu ifade soyle bir sekil almistir:
'Ermeniler ve ihtilalci komiteleri oyunda gerekli olan ahmaklardir'
(Lenin).
Rusya'nin dun Balkanlar'da Slavcilik veya Hiristiyanlik adi altinda
uyguladigi ve Dogu Anadolu'da da Ermenilere tatbik ettigi iki yuzlu
siyaset, bugun de daha degisik sekilde, fakat ayni amaclarla devam
etmektedir."
A. Alper Gazigiray, _Muslim Archival Material on the Genocide
Perpetrated by the Armenians Against the Muslim people in Eastern
Anatolia,_ Gozen Kitabevi, Istanbul, 1982.
pp. 453-455.
Picture: Another heap of slaughtered Muslim women and children by
Armenians.
"Bitlis Tas Mahallesinden olup, simdi Savur'da bulunan 45 yasinda
Huseyin oglu Bakkal Muhittin Efendi'nin yeminli ifadesi:
1915 Subat ayinin sonu idi. Evimde otururken, birden sehirin cesitli
yerlerinden surekli ates sesleri ve gurultulu sesler gelmeye basladi.
Bu Rus-Ermeni birliklerinin geldigini delalet ediyordu. Hemen sokaga
ciktim. Ceteler sehirde umumi bir katliam yapiyorlardi. Hemen ailemi
kurtarmak icin eve gittim. Yolda, Viranli katip Fazil Efendinin parca
parca edildigini gorunce, ailemle birlikte vilayet konagi tarafindan
kacmaya mecbur oldum. Orada yollar Ermeniler tarafindan kesilmisti.
Butun Muslumanlari yas farki gozetmeksizin olduruyorlardi.
Kurtulabilmek icin o taraftan hic bir cikis bulamadigimdan, dusmanin
eline gecmemek icin kendimi Bitlis'ten gecen nehre atmak istedim.
Kardesim Musa bu tesebbusume mani oldu ve Tanrinin inayetiyle buyuk
zorluklar pahasina genel katliamdan kurtulduk.
Binlerce kurban arasinda su taninmis kisiler vardi:
1. Esraftan Haci Semsettin oglu Tosun Efendi,
2. Herson mahallesinden Haci Yusuf oglu Abdulbaki Efendi,
3. Haci Hasan oglu Haci Mehmet,
4. Mahmut oglu Nadir,
5. Cemal oglu Abdulrezzak,
6. Mehmet oglu Dursun,
7. Recep oglu Hamit,
8. Bilal oglu Cemil,
9. Seyh Mehmet Kufrevi oglu Seyh Abdulmalik Efendi,
10. Bitlis Jandarma komutani Ismail Bey.
Mardin eski kadisi Ahmet Efendi yataginda katledildi. Kiz kardesi
Bedriye Zaman Hanim, Recep Efendinin kizi Perihan hanim, Onbasi
Halit'in karisi Leyla ve oglu Salih de korkunc iskencelerle evlerinde
oldurulduler. Musa Efendi kendi tarafinda kardesi Muhiddin gibi aci
sahneleri yasadi."
A. Alper Gazigiray, _Muslim Archival Material on the Genocide
Perpetrated by the Armenians Against the Muslim people in Eastern
Anatolia,_ Gozen Kitabevi, Istanbul, 1982.
pp. 451-452.
Picture: Heap of massacred Muslim women and children by Armenians.
"Mus multecilerinden 18 yasinda olan Abdurrahman oglu Mehmet Resul'un
Hani Muduru onunde verdigi yeminli ifadesi:
Betlevo koyu yakinlarinda 1915 ocaginin yarisina dogru yapilan savasta
yaralandim. Hasta olan uc arkadasimla ilerlemekte olan orduyu takip
edemedik ve dusman tarafindan esir edildik. Ilk once er Huseyin'in
gozlerini oydular ve ayaga kalk Osmanli askerleri geliyorlar mi diye
bak dediler. Sonra kucuk bir vadiye goturup orada kursuna dizdiler. Bu
cinayetten sonra ismini bilmedigim bir arkadasima saldirdilar. Korkunc
iskence ettikten sonra onu da oldurduler. Ucuncu arkadasimin sirasi
geldi. Onun tenasul uzuvlarini kesip agzina soktular ve sonra da
bogdular. Cellatlar arasinda uc Ermeniyi tanidim. Mus'un Jakar
mahallesinden Kes oglu Aram, Bagdasar oglu Aleksan ve Mus'un Bas
mahallesinden Avukat Hrant'in oglu Hrant diger bes tanesi Rus
askerleriydi. Bu haydutlar bana yaklasarak butun muslumanlarin sonunun
bu oldugunu soylediler ve tufegin demir ucunu yaktiklari ateste
kizartip vucuduma 24 yerinden sapladilar. Bu iskencelerden beni
kurtarmak isteyen bir Rus askeri geldiginde aci cigliklar atiyordum.
Bu asker beni bir kenara cekerek isminin Abdulmalik olup Kazanli bir
musluman aileden geldigini ve kurtarabilecegini soyledi. Sekiz cellat
ben ve 100 kisilik bir grup bize iltihak etti. Til koyu istikametine
gidiyorduk. Yolda 800 civarinda bir musluman topluluguna rastladik.
Ermeniler istisnasiz hepsini oldurup imha ettiler. Aksama dogru Til
koyune geldik. Ermeniler yanlarinda Karamese koyu yagmasi esnasinda
kacirdiklari iki musluman kadini getirmislerdi. Bu bahis konusu olan
iki kadin hamile idi. Ermeni ve Ruslarin ortasina getirildiler. Iki
asker ve iki Ermeni, kadinlarin tasidiklari cocuklarin cinsi uzerine
iki mecidiyelik bahse girismislerdi. Bunun uzerine kadinlarin
karinlarini bicakla deldiler, birisinden bir oglan cikarttilar,
digerinin cenini ise cesitli tahminlere yol acti. Bes dakika sonra 4
Rus ve 6 Ermeni, 6 genc musluman kiz getirdiler. Ermenilerin arasinda,
Mus'un Ziyaret koyunden olan birini tanidim. Kizlar siraya
sokulmuslardi. Bir Rus subayi geldi, aralarindan birini secerek
goturdu...[a disgusting story - ye]. Til koyunde uc gece gecirdim.
Hernekadar yaralarimdan pek aci cekiyor isem de musluman Rus
askerlerinin yardimiyla kurtulabildim. Safaga dogru Kazan koyune hakim
sinirlara geldim. Koyun icinden aci cigliklar atiliyordu. Gun
agardiginda Ermenilerin koy sakinlerini oldurduklerini ve diri diri
yaktiklarini gordum. Dehsetten tas kesilerek gece oluncaya kadar
yerimi terk etmedim. Karanlikta yola koyuldum ve her cesit zorluk
ve tehlikelerle karsilasilarak Hani'ye vardim."
A. Alper Gazigiray, _Muslim Archival Material on the Genocide
Perpetrated by the Armenians Against the Muslim people in Eastern
Anatolia,_ Gozen Kitabevi, Istanbul, 1982.
pp. 450-451.
Picture: Heaped corpses of slaughtered Muslim children by Armenians.
"Akcan (Mus) Nehiyesine bagli Avran koyunden gecen Osmanli Askerlerine
Ermeniler tarafindan yapilan zulum:
Eski Akcam Nahiyesi Muduru simdi Bervari Kazasinin Kaymakam Vekili olan
Ahmet Nurettin Efendinin yeminli ifadesi:
Hukumet tarafindan genel seferberlik ilan edildi ve bir ay sonra Akcan
nahiyesine mudur olarak atandim. Mus Mutasarrifi olan Servet bey hic
bir irk ve din farki gozetmeksizin sancagin tum halkina karsi durust ve
koruyucu idi. Halbuki Mus Ermenileri imkan oldugu zaman vergilerde ve
askerlere alinmada hukumete zorluklar cikartiyorlardi. Tasnaklarin ve
Ermeni papazlarin kiskirtici hareketlerini acikca goruyorduk. Ve
cevrilen dolap duzenlerin zararlarini arada sirada hissediyorduk.
Fesatci tesirlerin telkini ile Ermeni koylerinin bir cogu vahset
hareketlerinde bulunmakta gecikmediler. Ermeniler su ve ekmek
bahanesiyle gonullu asker ve Milisleri evlerine davet ediyorlar ve
orada bu kisileri kapali ve tenha yerlere goturup boguyorlar, gozlerini
oyup baslarini kopariyorlardi. Ozellikle askerlerin tufeklerine sahip
olmak icin hic bir zorluktan cekinmiyorlardi. Ermenilerin mezalimi
ozellikle 300 evlik olan Avran koyunde yapilmisti. Iste bu koyde 15
temmuz 1915 tarihinde actigimiz sorusturma sonucunda asagidaki bilgiler
meydana cikti.
Tasnak komitesi uyesi Ermeniye ait olan evin civarinda agzi cok dar
olan kapatilmis bir kuyu bulduk. Ortuyu kaldirdigimizda igrenc ve
pis kokular etrafa dagildi. Asagiya indirdigim bir adam kuyunun
insan cesetleriyle dolu oldugunu bildirdi. Kimliklerini tesbit etmek
uzere onlari yukari yukari cikarttik. Kurbanlarin sayisi 19 olup masum
ve zavalli askerlerden baska bir sey degildi. Cesetlerin durumu Osmanli
hukumetinin 600 senelik samimi himayesine mahzar olmus bu Ermenilerin
isledikleri korkunc cinayetlerin ancak uc dor gunluk bir mazisi
oldugunu gosteriyordu. Ermeniler tarafindan alcakca bogulan bu
askerlerin cesetlerini gomdukten sonra terk ettik."
A. Alper Gazigiray, _Muslim Archival Material on the Genocide
Perpetrated by the Armenians Against the Muslim people in Eastern
Anatolia,_ Gozen Kitabevi, Istanbul, 1982.
pp. 448-450.
Picture: Corpses of Muslim women and children slaughtered by Armenians.
"Sahitlerin Ifadeleriyle Ermeni Mezalimi - Bitlis Vilayeti:
Memleketi Bitlis olan ve simdi Mardin'in Nayalu koyune goc eden Suleyman
Oglu Ali'nin yeminli ifadesi:
Ruslarin Bitlis'i isgal etmek istediklerini erkenden ogrenen Van ve Bitlis
Ermenileri Muslumanlara saldirdilar. Kacmalarini onlemek icin yollarini
kapatarak Musluman halkini merhametsizce katlettiler. Bu arada 11 yasindaki
kayinbiraderim Ali, annesi Rabia, Azaranli Seyh Ahmet, karisi ve bir
hizmetcisi, komsularimiz Ahmet oglu ve kucuk yasta oglu, seksenlik
Hasan oglu Izzet, izinde olan iki asker kendilerini parca parca yapan
bu barbarlarin vahsetinin kurbani oldular.
17 kisiden mutesekkil ailemizden yalniz bes kisi, o da buyuk zorlukla
katliamdan kurtulabildiler. Yegenimin bir cogu havaya atilmis duserken
de bu haydut Ermeniler tarafindan ikiye kesilmistir.
Genc kizlari igfal etmisler sonrada hepsini kanlar icinde sokaklarda
suruklemislerdir. Toplam olarak; Muslumanlar uzerine, Ermeniler duyulmamis,
tasvir edilmez cinayetler islemislerdir.
Memleketi Bitlis olan ve simdi Mardin'in Nayali koyunde multeci olarak
bulunan Kamil oglu Abdulrazzak'in yeminli ifadesi:
Ilimizin isgalinde bir kardesimin ve amcamin aileleri ile birlikte erken
saatlerde Araplar koprusune gidiyorduk. Ermeniler yolumuzu kestiler ve
bizim onumuzde, kardesim Cerkes donlu oglu Abdulnadir ve kiz kardesim
Emine'yi oldurduler.
Biz kactik ve 18 kisiden yalniz 5 kisi kendini kurtarabilip Mardin'e
gelebildi. Gruptan geri kalanlar kandi cocuklarim dahil olmak uzere
esir olarak goturulduler veya oldurulduler.
Nazim kazasina bagli Kolpic Koyu ve bu koyden Ebubekir ve Abdulkerim'in
yeminli ifadesi:
Koyumuzun ilerisinde bulunan bir yerde bulunuyordum...Bu kritik anda
koyumuze iki ayri noktadan baskin yaparak gelen Rus ve cok miktarda
Ermeniden kurulu dusman ordusu halki oldurmeye ve evleri yakmaya
basladi. Icimizden bazilarinin bulundugu 150 kisi kilictan gecirildi.
Biz kacarken 'Bidet,' Orans koyunden 'Arsak,' Herit Ermeni koyunden
'Sandir' ve Sube koyunden 'Krizikio' adli Ermeniler arkamizdan; Islam
dinimize kufur ve Peygamberimize hakaret kusuyorlardi.
Rus ve Ermeniler o derece iskence yapmislardi ki donusumuzde hic kimse
goz yasini tutamadi. Birbirine baglanmis ciplak kadin ve erkekler
agaclara asilmislardi. Baslari koparilmis, memeleri kesilmis kadinlarin
goguslerinde iki parcaya bolunmus cocuklar vardi. Genc guzel kizlar
goturulmuslerdi. Haydutlar kendilerine yarayacak mobilyalari almislar,
digerlerini de yakmislardir."
A. Alper Gazigiray, _Muslim Archival Material on the Genocide
Perpetrated by the Armenians Against the Muslim people in Eastern
Anatolia,_ Gozen Kitabevi, Istanbul, 1982.
pp. 396-398.
Picture: Armenians burning a Mosque.
"Buradan Peklic koyune gidilerek bu bedbaht koyun de Ermeni mezaliminin
en igrenc sahnelerine maruz kaldigi gorulmustur. Mal, mulk yagma
edilmis, cami tahrip ve kirletilmistir. Burada da ahaliden gorulebilen
birkac kisi yemin ederek gorduklerini soylemislerdir: Dusmanla
birlikte koye giren Ermeniler, Karacayli Emrah ile Mahmut'un yolda
rastladiklari biri alti, digeri yedi yaslarinda iki masum cocugunu
almislar, kilise kapisinin esigine goturerek orada koyun bogazlar gibi
kestikten sonra kesilmis baslarini kilise tarafina govdelerini de
kapinin onune birakmislar ve ihtiyarlarin Fettah oglu Ahmet'i, Mirin
Efendiyi, Ahmet oglu Halim'i Akva oglu Kaya onbasiyi, Ciddi Mehmet'i,
Muhiy oglu Melayi, Mehmed Cavusu ve Mahdumu Osman'i, Sed Agayi, Hafiz
oglu Veli'yi, Dellal oglu Hayri'yi ve yedi yasindaki oglu Hakki'yi,
Mustafa oglu Zihni'yi, Yusuf oglu Mevlud'u, dort yasindaki kardesi
Eyup'u, kadinlardan Altin sacli Mevlud'un validesini, kizlardan Seyh
Besir'in 15 yasindaki kizini, Mustafa'nin alti yasindaki kizi Fatma'yi,
Karsli Omer'in sekiz yasindaki kizi Lefce'yi, dort yasindaki diger
kizi Ermer'i pek feci bir surette katl ve sehit ettiler. Pekvisli
Ahmet Bey hanesine iltica eden ve gizlenen 150 kadinla Ahmet beyin
ailesine ve Mamahatunlu Mustafa Efendinin biri 12, digeri 14 yasindaki
kerimesinin, 500 mutecaviz Ermeni tarafindan hucum edilerek kiz ve
kadinlarini namuslari kirletilmis ve bunlardan kendini teslim etmeyen
dort kadinla Izzet hatun adinda 30 yasinda bir kadinin bogazlanarak
kuyuya atildiklarini Molla Sukru ile arkadaslari buyuk bir teessur
icinde anlatmislardir. Heyetimiz koye vardigi zaman anlatilan senaata
kurban olan Izzet Hatun'un kesilmis basi henuz yerde idi. 150 kadinin
ve bir yasindaki kiz cocugun parmagindaki yuzugu almak icin parmaklarini
kesmislerdir. Bu koyun ihtiyarlarindan Dursun aga adindaki zat boynuna
taktiklari bir iple kuyubasina goturulerek bas asagi asarak
oldureceklerini soyleyip para istemisler, mevcut parasini verdigi halde
bir cok iskenceden sonra boynunun arkasindan kasatura ile kesmeye
baslamislar, nihayet her nedense terkederek gitmislerdir. Bu adam
boynundaki buyuk ve muthis yara ile bitap bir halde idi. Bu koyde
yapilan mezalimin haddi hesabi yoktu.
Erzurum - ilica - Askale - Tercan yolu uzerinde ve yakininda 11 koy
ile Tercan kasabasinda Ermenilerin yaptiklari buyuk iskence zulum
ve katliamlar boylece ozetlenmistir. Bu koylerden baska daha
yuzlerce koy ozellikle Antranik pasa diye anilan ve aslen Tercan'in
Koturlu koyunden bir Ermeni olan Aleksan oglu Antranik komutasindaki
hain ve insani duygulardan mahrum, kana susamis, birer hayvan gibi
vahsi cetelerin yaptiklari facialari, mubalagaya kapilmadan arzederim
ki, ancak %1 dir. Bu koyler tamamen harap olmus, butun kadinlarin
irzina gecilmis, cogu kesilmis ve onemli bir kismi da Erzurum'a
sevkedilmek bahanesiyle yollarda katlolunmustur. Bu alcak ve zalim
insan kilikli hayvanlar Turklerden intikam almak bahanesiyle ve
tamamen zevk icin yapmislardir. Eger yanlarinda Ruslar olmasa idi,
belki daha muthisini yapacaklardi. Uzun zamanlar bu tahrip edilen
koyler issiz ve virane olarak kalmistir."
Neside Kerem Demir, _The Crime of Genocide Committed by the
Armenians Against the Muslim People,_ Hulbe Basim ve Yayin
T.A.S., Ankara, 1979.
pp. 158-159.
Picture: Corpses of Muslim women and children slaughtered by Armenians
in the snow.
"San'atkarlar yaratilis itibariyle daha hassastirlar. Zulum ve iskence,
onlara daha cok tesir eder. Ermenilerin Turklere yapmis olduklari
mezalim, bilhassa halk sairlerimizde derin izler birakmistir. Insanin
maruz kalmaya degil, seyretmeye tahammul edemeyecegi Ermeniler
tarafindan cizilen bu korkunc manzaralar, 'Asik Kahraman'i tabir-i
hakikisiyle inletmistir. Zira, Asik Kahraman, bu vahsetin icinden,
kaderin siyirip cikardigi, bir kazazededir. Bu kazazede'nin basindan
gecen hadiseyi ve mezalimi tablolastiran siirini beraberce okuyalim.
Bu siir, Ermeni vahsetinin, dunya edebiyatina gecmis tek kanli levhasi
degildir. Ama biz sadece bir tane ile iktifa ediyoruz.
Ermeniler, 12 Mart'da ordumuzun Erzurum'a girisinden sonra da kanli ve
cok alcakca usullerle Turkler'i katliama giristiler. Yalniz, Sarikamis,
Arpacayi arasinda bulunan elliiki Turk koyunde, silahsiz erkekleri ve
coluk cocugu, cami, merek, ashane, kom ve ahir gibi buyuk yapilarla,
evlere doldurup, bir yandan gazyagi ve benzinle atese vererek, bir
yandan da benzeri kesici nesnelerle, yaylim atesleriyle pek vahsice
kirdilar. Altiyuzyetmisbir nufuslu (Kars'in dogu yakasindaki) Kale
koyunden (Derecik'ten) kurtulabilen 11 kisiden birisi olan Asik
Kahraman (1863 - 1944), bu koyle ucyuzaltmis kisinin bir yere
doldurularak, 15 Nisan'dan sonra nasil kirildigini, su acikli
destaninda anmaktadir. 11 Haziran 1939'da bu agiti yazdirmak icin
tekrarliyan rahmetli halk sairimiz, bunu soylerken gozlerinden
dolu gibi yas dokmus ve siirinin sonuna gelmeden, bayilivermisti."
Kalekoy (Derecik) Kirginina Agit:
1. Ey agalar nasil diyem derdimiz:
Vardi zulum sonu arsa dayandi.
Ermeni, Islami kirdi, taladi,
Mazlumlar amani, Arsa dayandi.
2. Kalo'nun koyunu basti, ceng acti
Mitralyoz, tufeklen od, ates sacti
Ana: Evlat atti, dag tasa kacti
Sabiler sivani, Arsa dayandi.
3. Mevla'nin takdiri eristi basa
Yuzcevirdi, bakmaz kardas kardasa
Ucyuz altmis cani yakti atasa
Koptu Nuh Tufani, Arsa dayandi.
4. Bir cenaze gordum: Kan olmus yuzu,
Patlamis kenara sicramis gozu,
Ucyuz altmis canin sonmemis kozu,
Yanan can dumani, Arsa dayandi.
5. Bir yigit vurulmus: Parmaklar, kamis,
Kacarken Kafir'e yolu ugramis,
Kafir tutmus: Tike, tike dogramis,
Hancer, kilic yani, Arsa dayandi.
6. Bir yigidi: Vurmus, yolda koymuslar,
Can teslim etmeden, deri soymuslar,
Cep - cep etmis, yanlarini oymuslar,
Et cepte, figani Arsa dayandi.
7. Bir gelini gordum: Ayaga kalkmis,
Sandim ki, cani var, yuzune bakmis,
Kafir mismar ile direge cakmis;
Mismar, civi unu, Arsa dayandi.
8. Bir hamile kadin: Davranmis kaca,
Ermeni, eylemis hep parca parca
Kilic ile vurmus, bolunmus kalca,
Aman kizil - kani, Arsa dayandi.
9. Cocugu, karnindan cikartmis, bakar;
Can teslim etmeden, sunguye takar,
Bebegin figani, dagi - tasi yakar,
Dagin, tasin sani, Arsa dayandi.
10. Altiyuz altmis can, batti kirildi,
Cogu yandi, geri kalan vuruldu,
Bu koyun defteri artik duruldu,
Halinin yamani, Arsa dayandi.
11. Tanri, Ermeni'ye vermis firsati,
Kesti kokumuzu, kirar milleti,
Ruz-i Kiyamet'e kaldi muddeti,
Intikamin gunu, Arsa dayandi.
12. Kahraman, kan aglar, bu serim duman,
Catti bu zamana, ol Ahir - zaman,
Islam'a olsun Ahrette iman,
Kafirler isyani, Arsa dayandi.[88]
[88] Edebiyatimizda Kars, II. Kitap, s. 123, 1958, Istanbul.
Neside Kerem Demir, _The Crime of Genocide Committed by the
Armenians Against the Muslim People,_ Hulbe Basim ve Yayin
T.A.S., Ankara, 1979.
pp. 171-172.
Picture: 1915 - Slaughtered Muslim women and children by the Armenians
in Subatan village.
"Harbin ilk zamanlarinda Beyezid'in Ermeni cete reislerinden Sevrun,
eski Erzurum Meb'usu Pastirmaciyan Karakin idaresinde bulunan 1200
mevcudlu hunhar Ermeni cetesi musluman koylerine musallat olarak
vahsi hayvanlara rahmet okutacak canavarlikla onlerine gelen masum
musluman ahaliyi parcaliyor, mal ve esyayi yagma ediyorlardi. Yaramis,
Agca, Viran koyleri ahalisi ekseriyetle oldurulduler. Bunlarin kanli
elinden yarali ve hasta askerler de kurtulamiyordu. Lize mevkiinde
ordumuz tarafindan mecburen terk edilen yarali askerleri, sonralari
Ruslar cekildigi zaman, Ermeni cetesi tarafindan sehit edilmis olarak
bulduk. Ruslarin yardimci oldugu Ermeni cetesi, Malazgird'de elliuc
koyu yikmis ve yirmibinden asagi olmayan nufusun buyuk bir kismini
oldurmustur. Bunlarin coguna sahid olduk...
Mus'un sukutunda Ermeni komitecileri kana susamis canavar gibi etrafa
saldirarak ele gecirdikleri muslumanlari feci bir surette
oldurmuslerdir. Kadinlarin irzlarina tecavuz ediyor, ihtiyarlari
ve gencleri olduruyorlardi. Esraftan Haci Murad ve Resid, Guneyli
Haci Mehmed ve Cafer, Timor, Abdah, Yusuf, Mehmed Han ve Nadir Agalar
Ermeniler tarafindan Maktel adi verilen yere goturulerek koyun
bogazlar gibi kesilmislerdir. Ermeniler Varto kazasinin Ayaz nahiyesi
dahilinde Cebran asiretinden Cundi Aga'ya aid onbes koy halkini
Murad nehrinin Gol Hazal denilen koluna atmislar ve ayaklarina agir
nalin cakmislardir.
Mugullu yoluyla dahile cekilen musluman ahaliye Ermeni komitecileri
hucum ederek acize, cocuk ve kadinlarin ihtiyarlarini Seyhulkarib
denilen Tekkeye doldurup yakmislar ve genc kadinlarin memelerini
keserek asmislar, annesi yarali bir cocugun sokakta annesinin
kesilmis memesini agzina vererek emzirmislerdir. Ulemadan Seyh
Abdulgaffar Efendi'nin kafasinin derisi soyularak sehid edilmistir.
Sertabib Mustafa Bey, onbes yirmi Ermeni komitecisinin binden fazla
coluk cocugu sarkilarla ve onde kadinlar raks etmekte olduklari halde
goturduklerini ve Garp koprusunden Dikili Tas'a kadar binlerce
cenaze gordugunu ve bunlarin buyuk bir kisminin pek feci bir tarzda
bogazlandigini yeminle ifade eylemistir."
Veysel Eroglu, _The Armenian Genocide of the Muslim People in Eastern
Anatolia,_ Sebil Yayinevi, Istanbul, 1978.
pp. 191-194.
Picture: Corpses of Muslim children massacred by the Armenians.
"Ruslara rehberlik eden Ermeniler ugradiklari koylerdeki erkekleri
tamamen oldurup kadinlara da tecavuz ile cesitli alcakliklar
yaptilar. Cocuklarla ihtiyarlar bile bunlarin vahsi zulumlerinden
kurtulamadi. Bir takim ihtiyar kadinlari bir eve doldurarak atese
verdiler. Hamile kadinlarin cocuklarini sungulere takarak teshir
ettiler. Bu duruma, hicrete mecbur olan ve her bir suretle hayatini
kurtaran yuzlerce kisi sahiddir. Bes yuzu gecen ihtiyar erkeklerle
pek cok kadin ve cocukdan meydana gelen bir kafile Ermeni ve Ruslar
tarafindan Arpaderesi namindaki mevkie goturulerek orada kursun ve
kilicla yok edildiler...
Askerimiz cekildikten sonra Ermeni ceteleri Rus ordusunun onculeri
olarak kasabaya girdiler. Cocuklara varincaya kadar ellerine gecen
erkekleri olduruyor, kadinlarin irzlarina geciyor ve masum bakire
kizlara acikca ve alcakca tecavuz ediyorlardi.
Serhad sehri guzel Erzurum'umuzu da Ermeniler kana boyadilar. En buyuk
mezalim burada islenmisti.
Erzurum katliamini Antranik ve doktor Azarif tertib ve icra etmislerdir.
Bu icraata 10 Subat'da baslaniyor. Erzurum'un butun mahalleleri
devriyelerle ihata olunuyor. Carsi ve pazarda toplasan cocuk, ihtiyar,
kadin, erkek yol yaptirmak bahanesiyle toplaniyor. Toplanan bu
masumlar kitlesi kafile, kafile Kars kapisi civarina yigiliyor.
Uzerleri iyice aranip para ve kiymetli esyalari tamamiyle gasbedildikten
sonra acilan cukurlara dolduruluyor. Sonra Erzurum garnizonlarinda
bulunan bilumum Ermeni askerleri, evlere taarruza basliyorlar. Yagma,
katliam, irza tecavuz gibi senaat butun siddetiyle tatbik ediliyor.
Bu mezalim Turk Ordusunun Erzurum'u kurtarma tarihi olan 24 Subat'a
kadar devam ediyor. Erzurum'a giren Turk kitalari sehir dahilinde
ikibinyuzyirmiyedi maktul cenazesini defnetmis, ayrica Kars kapisi
haricinde ikiyuz elli ceset bulmustur. Muslumanlar, Ermeniler
tarafindan balta, sungu ve mermi vasitasiyle oldurulmus, cigerleri
cikarilmak ve gozlerine kazik sokulmak suretiyle sehid edilmisti
(Mezalim Dosyasi). Hulasa olarak sadece Erzurum icinde katliama
maruz kalan ihtiyar, kadin, cocuk, ve erkegin yekunu sekiz bini
buluyordu. Erzurum'un Turk pazari kamilen yagma edilmis ve yakilmistir.
Turk kitalarinin Erzurum'u seri bir sekilde kurtarmalari, geri kalan
musluman ahalinin katliamini engelliyor. Erzurum'da Rus Kale Topcu
Ikinci Alayi Kumandani, Yarbay Twerde Khlebok kendi elyazisiyla
yazdigi hatiratinda Ermenilerin isledikleri katliami tamamen teyid
etmektedir.
Rus ihtilali basindan itibaren Osmanli kitalarinin Erzurum'u kurtardiklari
12 Mart tarihine kadar Ermenilerin Erzurum sehri ve havalisindeki Turk
ahalisine karsi tavir ve hareketlerine dair yazilan bu hatirat [37]
Onbirinci Rus Erzurum Kale Topcu Alayinin tarihcesine ilave olarak
yazilmis ise de basli basina bir vesika mahiyetini haizdir. Iste bu
hatirattan alinan kisimlari dikkatlerinize sunuyoruz: [more horror
stories on the Armenian genocide of 2.5 million Muslim people - uta]"
[37] Bu vesikanin asli, Harp Tarihi Dosyasi Arsivi - Dolap: 123, Goz: 10,
Dosya: 2-5'dedir.
Veysel Eroglu, _The Armenian Genocide of the Muslim People in Eastern
Anatolia,_ Sebil Yayinevi, Istanbul, 1978.
pp. 181-186.
Picture: Heap of Muslim women and children massacred by the Armenians.
"Erzurum vilayetine bagli kaza ve koylerde Ermenilerin isledikleri
mezalim tuyler urperticidir. Bu korkunc zulumleri dikkatlerinize
sunuyoruz:
Tahribat ve mezalim hakkinda tahkikat icrasi icin memur edilen
komisyonun raporlari da Ermenilerin zulumleri hakkinda bize kafi
derecede fikir verecektir.
'24 Mayis sali gunu buyucek bir koy olan Kurukol'a ulastik. Bu koy
Ermeniler tarafindan yapilan tahribattan dolayi elim bir harabe
manzarasina ducar olmustu. Perisan enkaz, yapilan alcakliklarin sanki
lisan-i hal ile sessiz birer sahidi idi. Bu issiz harabeyi buyuk bir
teessurle konusturmaya calisirken Mizkik koyunden ailesiyle birlikte
hicret etmekte bulunan tahminen 65 yaslarinda Kaya Mehmet naminda bir
ihtiyara tesaduf ettik. Bu zavalli bedbaht adam Mizkik Koyu'nde Ermeni
ceteleri tarafindan irtikap olunan alcakliklara bir daha hedef olmamak
icin Erzincan'a hicret ediyordu. Sahid oldugu facialar hakkinda
malumat taleb ettik, yemin ederek asagidakileri soyledi:
`Kadin ve cocuklari taarruzdan kurtarmak icin binalarda, yerin
altindaki anbarlarda erzak kuyularinda saklamaga mecbur olduk.
Ermeniler kadinlari, bulamayinca busbutun hiddetlenerek ele
gecirdikleri erkekleri oldurup yok ediyorlardi. Mizkik Koyu'nde
Ismail adindaki kardesimi kursunla kafatasini parcalamak suretiyle
sehid ettiler. 60 yaslarinda Kurt Ahmet adinda bir ihtiyarin sungu
ile gobeginden, Esat adindaki oglunun da kilinc darbeleriyle
boynundan vurularak vahsiyane bir tarzda sehid edildigini...
Ermenilerin, ayirarak Pasinler'e gonderdikleri ondort gencden ucu
kacarak Goktas'a avdet ettiler. Bunlarin sozlerine gore iclerinden
iki genc sungu ile parcalanmistir. Bu koyde sekiz dokuz yaslarinda
kizlar da dahil oldugu halde butun kadinlarin namuslari cignendi.
Koyde yirmiyedi ev tamamiyle yikilmistir. Goktas ahalisi bu
alcakliklari yapan Ermenilerin ekserisinin Tercanli olduklarini
gormusler, bunlari sahsen tanidiklarini ifade etmislerdir. Antranik
Pasa adiyla anilan Goturlu Aleksanoglu Antranik, Cilinizli Nisan,
Armenak Taku'nun oglu Olos, Masikoglu Sehak ve arkadaslari oldugunu
tanimislardir. Ermeniler koyun camiini de tahrib ettikten sonra
ahira cevirerek kirletmisler ve boylece Islam'in mukaddesatina
tecavuzden geri durmamislardir. 7 - 9 yaslari arasinda uc kiz
cocugunun bikirleri izale edilmistir.
Buradan Alirik koyune hareket ettik. Bu koy de zulum ve tecavuzlerin
en muthisine sahne oldugunu acikca gosteriyordu. Koyun esraflarindan
Mehmed Bey bazi koylulerle birlikte yemin ederek gorduklerini buyuk
bir teessurle hikaye ettiler.'"
Veysel Eroglu, _The Armenian Genocide of the Muslim People in Eastern
Anatolia,_ Sebil Yayinevi, Istanbul, 1978.
pp. 177-180.
"Enva-i mezalim ve iskenceyle hapishaneye sokuluyor carsi ve pazarda
bulunmiyanlarin zorla evlerine giriliyor. Para, kiymetli esya ve
ziynetleri alindiktan sonra bir kismi kapilari onunde feci bir
suretde katlediliyor. Diger kismi ise cesitli zulumlerle hapishaneye
sevkolunuyor. Bu hale Subatin ucuncu sabahina kadar devam ediliyor.
3 Subat sabahi musluman kadinlarinin da toplanmasina baslaniyor ve
topladiklarindan ondort kadinla iki kizi, Salih Hamdi Efendi'nin
ticarethanesi karsisindaki Haydar Bey'in ahsap oteline dolduruyorlar.
Alaturka saat ucte mevkuflarin katli su surette icra edliyor. Ise
evvela Salih Hamdi Efendi'nin ticarethanesinde mevkuf bulunanlardan
baslaniyor. Salih Hamdi Efendi'nin girildigi zaman sagdan birinci
odaya yirmiuc, soldan birinci odaya dort, ikinci odaya altmis,
ucuncu odaya elli ve boslugun nihayetindeki odalardan soldakine
kirksekiz ve sagdakine sekiz ki, cem'an yuzdoksanuc can yerlestiriliyor.
Evvela soldan birinci odada bulunan belediye reisi Hafiz Suleyman
Efendi ile Kormas koylu Ahmed ve Abrasli Irfan ve Vagandali Piri odadan
cikariliyor. Ellerinde bulunan sungu, balta ve demirle pek feci bir
surette olduruluyor, muteakiben sirasiyla diger odalara gecerek ayni
suretle mahpuslar katle baslaniyor. Gozleri onunde feci bir surette
ve vahsice arkadaslarinin katledildigini goren diger mahpuslar canhiras
sadalarla bagiriyorlar ve kendilerine sira gelince mumkun mertebe
nefislerini mudafaaya calisiyorlarsa da butun mudafaa imkanlarindan
mahrum bulunmalari yuzunden iskence ve vahsetin en buyugune maruz
kalarak bin turlu mezalim arasinda terk-i hayat ediyorlar. Yalniz
ikinci odada bulunan altmis kisiden Murad, Cavus, Sevki, Sarac, Hafiz
ve Zahid mahallesinden Beydioglu Sadik (Ermeniler firar ettikten sonra
yangin icinden cikarilmislar ve halen hayattadirlar) oluler arasina
sokularak kendilerine olu vaziyeti vererek hayatlarini kurtarabiliyorlar.
Sungu ve baltayla icra edilen fecaat kafi gelmiyormus gibi cenazeler
uzerine gazyagi dokulmek ve ateslenmek suretiyle arada sikisik kalanlardan
olmemis olanlar dahi yakiliyor.
Buralarda fecaat sahneleri kapandiktan sonra boslugun nihayetindeki
ve soldaki odada bulunan kirksekiz kisiye sira geliyor...[a disgusting
story and a picture - uta]
Bu feci sahne devam etmekteyken Haydar Bey'in oteline doldurulan ondort
kadini bastan nihayete kadar soyduktan sonra ciplak bir halde Haydar
Bey'in oteline bitisik Cavusoglu'nun oteline nakil ve birer birer
katlettikten sonra oteli yakiyorlar."
Veysel Eroglu, _The Armenian Genocide of the Muslim People in Eastern
Anatolia,_ Sebil Yayinevi, Istanbul, 1978.
pp. 173-175.
"Karargahini Erzurum'un onuc kilometre batisinda Alaca Koyu'ne nakleden
Osmanli Birinci Kafkas Kolordusu kumandani mezkur koyde Ermeni mezalimine
dair gorduklerini su suretle naklediyor:
a) Odalara doldurularak yakmaga tesebbus ettikleri musluman ahaliden
ikiyuzyetmissekizi sehid edilmis, kirkikisi'nden cogu agir olmak
uzere yarali olarak bulundu.
b) Ikiyuz yetmis sekiz sehid, kumes icerisinde, irzlarina tecavuzden sonra
oldurulerek, cigerleri duvarlara asilmis genc kizlar, karinlari desilmis
hamile kadinlar, beyinleri akitilmis veyahud uzerlerine benzin dokulerek
yakilmis cocuk ve erkekler mevcuttu.
c) Ilica kasabasi da ayni akibete ugruyor. Burada yuzlerce masum mahv u
perisan oluyor.
Yek digeri takip eden bu facialar sistematik bir tarzda cereyan ediyor.
Hasseten Cenes, Alaca, Ilica mezalimleri bilhassa tuyler urpetici ve
dehset verici bir tarzda islenmistir. Kadinlari duvara civilemek, o
kalbleri cikarilarak duvarlara asmak, hamile kadinlarin cocuklari
cikarilarak kucaklarina verilmek gibi hunharca mezalim islenmistir.
Ahmed Refik ise bu bolgedeki mezalimi soyle anlatiyor:
'Ilica, muntazam ve buyukce bir koy. Erzurum ovasi buradan basliyor.
Ovanin solunda kalan koyler kamilen harab, Ilica'nin hamamlari
muntazam ve latif. Suyu o derece sicak degil. Ermeniler en ziyade
burada mezalim yapmislar. Coluk cocuk, kadin erkek, koyun ahalisinden
bir cogunu oldurmusler. Koyde tek bir kimse dahi kalmamis.'[35]
Ermeni mezalimi sonunda Dogu Anadolu'da harabeden, yikilmis, sondurulmus
ocaklardan baska birsey kalmamisti. Ahmed Refik'in musahadelerini
dikkatlerinize sunuyoruz.
'Harabeler ortasindayim. Etrafimda turbeler yikilmis, camilerin
cinilerine varincaya kadar sokulmus. Evlerin yanmis direklerinden el'an
bogucu bir duman cikiyor. Ellerimi surdugum tuz cuvallari bile hala
sicak...Burada benzin alevleri icinde bogucu dumanlar, kizgin atesler
arasinda feryatlari ayyuka cikarak can veren Turkler, Ermeni zulmuyle
perisan olmuslar, yanik direkler altinda yatiyorlar. Trabzon'dan
Erzurum'a kadar harabeden baska birsey gorulmuyor. Hicbir koyde, hicbir
kulubede dahi canli bir mahluka tesaduf edilmiyor. Ermeni zulmunu simdi
aclik takib etmis.'
Ardasa'dan Erzincan'a kadar butun yol boyunca pak nadir olarak, ac ve
perisan Turkler'e rastlaniyordu. Bir zamanlar kasabalari ve koyleri
dolduran Turk halki adeta kokunden denecek derecede ortadan kalkmisti.
Muhaceret ve olum, Anadolu'nun camlik tepelerinde, yesil ovalarinda
tuten ocaklari sondurmus mahvetmisti. Moskoflarin geri cekilmeleri
uzerine Ermeniler kasabalarda ve koylerde o derece tahribat yapmislardi
ki; Trabzon'dan Kars'a kadar hicbir koyde yasayan bir can koymamislar,
zaten toprak binalardan ibaret koyleri yakmislar, yikmislar, gerilerinde
harabeden baska birsey birakmamislardi."
[35] Ahmed Refik, "Kafkas Yollarinda," sh. 35-36.
Veysel Eroglu, _The Armenian Genocide of the Muslim People in Eastern
Anatolia,_ Sebil Yayinevi, Istanbul, 1978.
pp. 170-173.
"Mamahatun (Tercan) istikametinde ilerliyen Turk kitalari, Mamahatun
kasabasinin kamilen denecek derecede yakilarak kasabanin yerle bir
oldugunu ve ahalisinin evlere doldurularak yakmak, sungu ve kursunla
oldurulmek suretiyle imha edilmis oldugunu gormustur. Mamahatun
kasabasi icinde ve civarinda sungu ve kursunla sehid edilip Turk
kitalari tarafindan toplattirilan masumlarin adedi ucyuzu buluyordu.
Birinci Kafkas Kolordu Kumandani, Onbesinci Kolordu Kumandani
Tuggeneral Kazim Karabekir'in 15 Eylul'de Erzurum'a gelen Amerikali
General Harbord Hey'etine verdigi raporda Mamahatun'daki mezalimi
soyle anlatiyor:
'Mufrezemiz 22 Subat'ta Mamahatun'u isgal etti. Burada sag kalan kimse
bulunmadi. Butun ahalisi buyuk bir cukura doldurularak oldurulmustu;
her taraf yaniyordu. Bunlari gozumle gordum. 25 Subat'ta bir kesif
kolumuzla Askale isgal edildi.
Karargahimin bulundugu Alacakoyu'nde cenazeler insanin aklini
oynatacak bir haldeydi. Butun cocuklar sungulenmis; yaslilar ve
samanliklara doldurulup yakilmis gencler baltalarla parcalanmisti;
civilere asilmis ciger ve kalpler goruluyordu...' [usual horrifying
pictures of the Muslim women and children slaughtered by the Armenians
- uta]
Simdi de Erzincan - Erzurum arasinda Ermeni Mezalimini Ahmed Refik'in
'Iki Komite Iki Kital' isimli eserinden nakledelim:
'Anadolu sefalet icindeydi. Bican'da cocuk baslari goruluyor.
Mamahatun, parcalanmis evladlarini sinesine gommus, harab camileri,
yikilmis evleriyle adeta agliyordu. Ermeniler Akkoyunlulardan kalma
camii berhava etmisler ve ahaliden pek cogunu da oldurmuslerdi.
Asagida dere kenarinda genis bir cukur yuzlerce Turk oluleriyle
doluydu. Kokmus insan oluleri, elbiseleriyle, cariklariyla
birbirlerine karismisdi. Bu cesetlerin eriyen yaglari, ezilmis
baslari, kopmus kollari ve ayaklariyla yiginlar teskil ediyordu.
Sigircik kumeleri bu talihsiz olulerin etrafinda, soguktan kabaran
siyah tuyleriyle otusuyor ve ucusuyorlardi.
Anadolu acliktan telef oluyordu. Yenikoy halki harabeler ortasinda
ot yemekle mesguldu...Yollarda koy harabelerinden baska birsey
yoktu. Hicbir koyde bir tek insan gorulmuyordu. Yol kenarlarinda
insana muteallik tesaduf edilen seyler; kol, ayak, el, kelle
parcalariydi. Koca Ilica hemen bombostu. Bu guzel yerleri sigircik
kumelerinden baska hicbirsey senlendirmiyordu. Ilica halki Ermeniler
tarafindan kamilen denecek derecede kana bogulmustu.'[34]
Tazegul koy ahalisinden otuz kadin, cocuk katlolunuyor ve yirmibes
erkek de birlikte alinip goturuluyor ki, bunlarin da ayni elim akibete
ducar olduklari anlasiliyor.
Tilkitepe'sinin iki kilometre guneyinde Cenes koyu halkinin yakilmak
ve sungulenmek ve hamile kadinlarin karinlari yarilarak cikarilan
cocuklar kucaklarina verilmek suretiyle pek feci ve seni bir surette
sehid edilmis olduklari anlasildi.
Oreni, kamilen yakilmis ve ahalisi tamamen katledilmistir."
[34] Ahmed Refik, "Iki Komite Iki Kital," sh. 73-74.
Veysel Eroglu, _The Armenian Genocide of the Muslim People in Eastern
Anatolia,_ Sebil Yayinevi, Istanbul, 1978.
pp. 673-769.
Pictures of the Muslim women and children slaughtered by the Armenians
in Subatan village.
Picture of Erzincan, a Muslim city burnt and destroyed by the Armenians.
Pictures of the aged Muslims stabbed to death after having their eyes
gouged out by the Armenians.
Pictures of the corpses of massacred Muslims in the snow.
Pictures of the Muslim children massacred by the Armenians.
Pictures of the heaped corpses of butchered Muslim children by the
Armenians.
Picture of another heap of slaughtered Muslim women and children by
the Armenians.
(so it goes...)
pp. 390-392.
"24 Mayis sali gunu buyucek bir koy olan Kurukale'ye gidildikte bu koyun
Ermeniler tarafindan tamamen harab edildigi gorulmustur. Koyde hic kimse
yoktur. Bu koyden ayrilip baska bir koye giderken Mijik koyunden ailesi
ile birlikte goc eden 65 yaslarinda Kaya Mehmet adinda bir ihtiyara
rastlanildi. Bu zavalli bahtsiz adam, Ermenilerin zulmunden kurtulmak
icin Erzincan'a goc ediyordu. Bu adam, vilayet hukuk musaviri Kemal, ve
Ilica nahiye Muduru Sukru Beylerin onunde yemin ederek sunlari soylemistir:
'Kadinlari ve cocuklari taarruzdan korumak icin evlerin altindaki zahire
kuyularina saklamaya mecbur olduk. Ermeniler, kadinlarimizi bulamayinca
busbutun kudurarak oradaki butun erkekleri oldurduler. Yine Geyik
koyunde Ismail adindaki kardesim kursunla kafatasini parcalamak
suretiyle sehit edildi.
60 yaslarinda Kurk Ahmet namindaki bir ihtiyarin sungu ile gobeginden
ve Esad adindaki oglunun da kilic darbeleriyle boynundan vurularak
vahsi bir tarzda sehit edildigi gibi Sabit oglu Medet ve Ali oglu Aga
ile Dursun oglu Husnu de her turlu iskence ve eziyetlerle oldurulduler.
Bunlari bizzat gordum. Bu feci olaylar, gozumun onunden hic gitmiyor.
Hele Dursun oglunun haremi Izzet Hatunu oyle bir vaziyette katlettiler
ki, bunlari unutmak kabil degildir. Bicare kadinin bacak ve budunu
adeta kiyma dograrcasina sungu ile parcaladilar.'
Bu zavalli adam bunlari anlatirken mutemadiyen agliyor, gordugu korkunc
facialarin etkisiyle heyecandan tir tir titriyordu.
Ayni gun aksama dogru Terpusak koyune gittik. 70 lik uc dort ihtiyarla
iskence yapilmis bir genc kiz bir kac kadindan baska kimse olmayan bu
koyde, ihtiyarlardan Sadir oglu Musa ile Muhtar Huseyin, Suleyman oglu
Hurrem yemin ettikten sonra sunlari anlattilar:
'Ruslardan once Terpusak koyune gelen Ermeni cetelerinin yaptiklari
yagma ve gasp ile mezalim soylemekle bitmeyecek derecede coktur.
Ermeniler genc erkekleri birer birer sokaklarda kudurmus kopekler
gibi katl ve itlafa basladilar. Kadinlara fiili seni (gayri mesru
bir sekilde irza tecavuz) icrasindan sonra turlu hakaret ederek
onlari oldurduler...'"
A. Alper Gazigiray, _Muslim Archival Material on the Genocide
Perpetrated by the Armenians Against the Muslim people in Eastern
Anatolia,_ Gozen Kitabevi, Istanbul, 1982.
pp. 388-390.
"Ermeniler Bayburt'u terkettikleri gun kasabanin en guzel konak ve
magazalarindan 400 kadarini yakmislardir. 28 Subat gunu ekmeklik un
dagitilacagini ilan ederek bir kisim kadin, erkek ve cocuklari
evvelce mahpushane yapilan buyuk bir binaya sokarak o binayi vahsiyane
bir sekilde yakmislar ve ayni zamanda sokaklarda tesaduf ettikleri
cocuk, kadin ve erkekleri sungu ve kursunla sehit etmek suretiyle
her turlu fenaligi yapmislardir. Ermeniler bu zavalli insanlari
yakarken bunlarin imdat diye bagirislari ve inlemelerini bir musiki
nagmesi gibi karsilayarak eglenceler yapmislar ve bununla da
yetinmeyerek binanin icine bacalarindan iceriye el bombasi ve
pencerelerden de kursunlar yagdirmislardir. Insanlik aleminin simdiye
kadar sahit olmadigi ve tarihin hic bir devirde kaydetmedigi bir
sekilde yakilan ve katledilen gorulmemis iskencelerle yok edilen bu
Turk halkinin mevcudu 500 den fazla idi. Bunlardan baska kasaba icinde
300 kadar yarali kadin, erkek ve cocugun askeri doktorlarimiz
tarafindan tedavisine ve yaralarinin sarilmasina baslanmistir.
Vehip Pasa da bas komutanlik vekaletine bir rapor vermistir: Ayni
dosyanin 51 nci bolgesini teskil eden bu rapor soyledir:
'Bugun Erzincan'a geldim. Cardakli bogazindan Erzincan'a kadar olan
bahcelerin agaclari kesilmis, koylerden bir kisi dahi saglam
kalmamistir. Erzincan'da isledikleri facialari insanlik tarihi
bugune kadar kaydetmemistir. Uc gunden beri Ermeniler tarafindan
oldurulerek meydanda kalan cenazeler toplattirilmaktadir. Sehit
edilen gunahsiz halk arasinda memeden kesilmemis cocuklar, 90 yasini
ikmal etmis ihtiyarlar, parcalanmis kadinlar vardir. Bunlarin
fotograflari aldirilmaktadir [pictures are available in the
book if you have the stomach - uta]. Vakalar hakkinda tutanaklar
tutulacaktir.'
9 uncu Ordu Komutani Yakup Sevki Pasa da Erivan bolgesi hakkinda su
raporu gondermisti:
'Ermeni kit'alarinin Erivan guney dogusundaki demir yolunun hemen
dogusundaki bolgede bulunan Vedi ve Serdar abad kasabalari civarina
gelerek islam halkini katlettikleri ve esraftan Ali zade Demir
Beyle, Fethi Bey zade Bedri Bey'lerin de bu maktuller arasinda
bulunduklari bu arada bir cok halki katleyledikleri, bunlardan
600 kadarinin Aras nehrinin dogusuna kacarak perisan bir halde
Dogu Beyazid'a geldikleri ve Ermenilerin islam halki keserek
ilerledikleri bildirilmistir. Nahcivan bolgesinde de bir cok
islam halk Ermeniler tarafindan sehit edilmistir. Nahcivan'in
kuzeyinde Elmali denilen yerde 683 ve buna yakin diger bir koyde
de 516 kisi katledilmistir. Bu esnada genc ve guzel kadinlari da
ayirarak bunlarin irzlarina gectikleri ve diger bir kisim kadin
kafilesini de evlere doldurark yaktiklari ogrenilmistir.'
Birinci Dunya Harbinde yapilan Ermeni mezalimi daha ziyade Erzurum,
Van, Bitlis, Diyarbakir, Trabzon vilayetlerinde yapildigindan, bu
vilayetlerdeki mezalimden toplanabilenleri asagiya cikarilmistir.
Bunlar yapilan mezalimin pek azini teskil eder. Hepsini toplamak
cok zamana ihtiyac gosterdigi gibi, ciltler ve kitaplar dolduracagindan
bu sebeble yalniz bir fikir vermek uzere bu kadarcikla yetinilmistir."
Veysel Eroglu, _The Armenian Genocide of the Muslim People in
Eastern Anatolia,_ Sebil Yayinevi, Istanbul, 1978.
pp. 169-170.
"Ermeni Mezalimi'nin Erzincan'daki canli sahidi Haci Dursun'un bu
kitabin yazarina aglayarak anlattiklarini arzediyorum:
'Erzincan'da ahaliyi kisim kisim toplamaya Ruslar'in cekilmesinden
bir ay sonra basladilar. Once imamlari ve muhtarlari Devekuru'ya
yol yapma bahanesiyle topladilar. Fakat bunlari Kilise Meydanindaki
Kiliseye goturup aksam oldugunda onar kisilik kafileler halinde kuyu
baslarina getirip davar keser gibi kestiler. Sonra diger halki da
emsaliyle toplayip ayni hunharca mezalimi irtikap ettiler.
Kactiklari gunu Tilhas'li Mahmud Efendi'nin coluk ve cocugunu
dogradilar. Sipyatagi'li Hoca'nin dort oglunu kursunladilar. Jandarma
Yuzbasisi Memduh ve hemsiresini Tasci Mahallesindeki evlerinde
katlettiler.
Isledikleri katliam korkunctur. Mesela Kanligol Mahallesinde bir adami
oldurdukten sonra duvar kenarina dayamislar, gogsunu yarip cigerlerini
ve girtlagini cikarip girtlagini agzina, cigerlerini de kucagina
vermislerdi.
Osmanli Ordusu sehri kurtardiginda Kilise Meydaninin civarindaki
harabe ve arsalarin Ermeniler tarafindan katledilen muslumanlarin
cesetleriyle tiklim tiklim dolu oldugunu gorduk. Erzincan ahalisinin
takriben %90'ini coluk, cocuk, kadin ve ihtiyar demeden katlettiler.
%10'u ancak mucize eseri kurtulabildi.'
Dursun Dayi'nin kalbi yaraliydi. Aradan gecen yarim asirdan fazla zaman
bu yarayi kapatamamisti.
Mamahatun istikametinde ilerliyen Turk kitalari, Mamahatun (Tercan)
kasabasinin kamilen denecek derecede yakilarak kasabanin yerle bir
oldugunu ve ahalisinin evlere doldurularak yakmak, sungu ve kursunla
oldurulmek suretiyle imha edilmis oldugunu gormustur. Mamahatun
kasabasi icinde ve civarinda sungu ve kursunla sehid edilip Turk
kitalari tarafindan toplattirilan masumlarin adedi ucyuzu buluyordu."
Dr. Kirzioglu M. Fahrettin, _The Armenian Genocide of the Muslim
People in Kars Province,_ Kardes Matbaasi, Ankara, 1970.
pp. 83-86.
Kazim Karabekir:
"Gectigim yerlerde hayat kalmadigini goruyordum. Karargah'imin bulundugu
Alacakoyu'nde, cenazeler, insanin aklini oynatacak bir halde idi: Butun
cocuklar sungulenmis; yaslilar ve kadinlar samanliklara doldurulup
yakilmis, gencler baltalarla parcalanmisti; civilere asilmis ciger ve
kalpler goruluyordu.
Erzurum'da oyle acikli manzaralar gorduk ki, insani insanliktan
igrendiriyordu: Halk, gozyaslari ile suraya - buraya kosup kimi oglunu,
kimi babasini, kimi karisini sungulenmis veya yakilmis buluyor, saclarini
yoluyordu. Bircok sokaklarda, hic hayat gorunmuyordu: Yerlerde cocuk, kadin,
yasli kanlar icinde yatiyordu. Yalniz son gece (11-12 Mart) uc bin Musluman
kestiklerini, iyice ogunerek Ermeniler, Ruslara'a da anlatmislar; bunu,
Yarbay Twerdo-Khlebof Rapor'unda ('Hatira'sinda) nesretmistir. Demiryolu
Istasyonu'nda, sanki bir mezarlik olulerini disariya firlatmisti. Cenazeler
arasindan gecerek, bu kiyiciliklari gorduk. Hele (Resul Beyin Konagi basta
olmak uzere), icerisine insanlari doldurup birlikte yaktiklari karsilikli
binalar, insani titretiyordu.
8 Nisan'da Kagizman'i isgal eden bir mufrezemiz, Islam ahaliden dortyuz
kisinin sokaklarda olduruldugunu; bu cinayetin yapilmasi icin: 'Artik
kardes olduk, silahlarinizi veriniz; birbirimize bir kotuluk yapmiyacagiz'
diyerek, silahlari topladiktan sonra kirgin'a baslamis olduklarini
bildirdi (bu arada, 1893 dogumlu ve essiz degerde cok kudretli bir sair
olan Kagizmanli Hafiz Receb Hifzi de, Carsi Mahallesindeki Mahbushane'ye
doldurulup sungu ile sehid edilen yuzlerce Turk arasinda, iki sungu
yarasi basindan ve bir sungu yarasi da gogsunden alarak olum halindeyken
dize cokup - 'Allah, Allah' diye zikretmekte iken 8 Nisan'da gorulup
bir eve goturulmusse de, ertesi gun gece vakti sehid olmustur)."
A. Alper Gazigiray, _Muslim Archival Material on the Genocide
Perpetrated by the Armenians Against the Muslim people in Eastern
Anatolia,_ Gozen Kitabevi, Istanbul, 1982.
pp. 386-388.
"Ermeniler tarafindan tamamen tahrip edilen kasabada hic bir bina yoktur.
Ruslarin cephane anbari yaptiklari cami dinamitle ucurulmustur. Mamahatun
[Tercan - uta] turbesi yakilmistir. Kasaba bir harabedir. Her taraf musluman
oluleriyle doludur. Yalniz kasabada Ermenilerin oldurdukleri coluk cocugun
miktari yediyuz'e yukselmistir. Cesetlerin bazilarini hendek kenarlarinda
kollari bagli olarak birakmislardir. Bir coklarinin baslari balta ile
kesilmistir.
Halk Ruslardan hicbir fenalik gormemistir. Butun cinayetler ve tahribat
Ruslarin cekilmesinden sonra Ermeniler tarafindan yapilmistir. Ruslarin
biraktiklari erzak ve malzeme, kasabayi mudafaa eden Ermeniler tarafindan
yakilmistir.
Erzurum mezalimi hakkinda verilen diger bir raporda, yuz kadar konagin
icine ikiser ucer yuz kisilik insanlarin doldurularak konaklarin atese
verildigi bildirilmektedir. Bu hesaba gore Yalniz Erzurum'da Ermenilerin
bu surette yaktiklari insanlarin miktari 10 bin'den fazla oldugu
anlasilmaktadir. Bunlardan baska Erzurum sokaklarinda ve evlerde toplanan
cenazelerin miktarinin dort binden fazla oldugu anlasilmistir.
Bu raporlarin kapsadigi bilgiler, yabanci gazete muhabirleri tarafindan
aynen gorulmustur.
Dogu grubu komutani Yakup Sevki Pasa tarafindan 29 Mayis tarihinde Ermeni
mezalimi hakkinda bas komutanlik vekaletine yazilan yazilar soyledir:
'Rus ordusunun terhisinden sonra cephenin Ermeniler tarafindan isgaline
baslandigi gunden itibaren bugune kadar Ermeniler islam koylerini yakip
yikmislar ve katliam etmislerdir. Erivan, Kars, Kagizman, Sarikamis kismen
Ardahan bolgesindeki butun koylerdeki halkin cogunun katledildigi ve
koylerin tahrip olundugu ogrenilmistir. Ermenilerin simdiye kadar yaptiklari
mezalim ve facialar sayilmayacak kadar coktur. Leninakan'da 500 araba ile
baska yere nakledilmekte olan 3000 kadar islam ahaliyi Ermeniler yollarda
tamamen katletmislerdir.
Arpacay kazasinin Melik koyu bolgesindeki koyler tamamen yakilmis ve
ahalisi katliam edilmistir. Suragel nahiyesi bolgesinde 67 koy halki
Ermeniler tarafindan tamamen katledilmistir.
Kagizman dogusundaki Kulp ve civarinda 1000 kisi iki makineli tufek iki
top'tan murekkep bir Ermeni kuvveti Kolp ve Erivan bolgesindeki koyler
halkini kamilen oldurmustur.'"
A. Alper Gazigiray, _Muslim Archival Material on the Genocide
Perpetrated by the Armenians Against the Muslim people in Eastern
Anatolia,_ Gozen Kitabevi, Istanbul, 1982.
pp. 384-385.
"Ayni dosyada, Ermeni cetelerinden ortalama 2000 kisilik bir kuvvettin
Akcaabad kasabasini isgal ederek kasabanin muslumanlarini vahsiyane
bir surette katliam ettikleri yazilidir. Bu caniler, musluman kadinlarin
baslarini kesmisler ve erkeklerle kadinlarin parcalanan cesetlerini
ve muhtelif azalarini pek cirkin bir surette teshir eylemislerdir.
17 sayili dosyada da, 1000 kadar Ermeni eskiyasinin alti adet toplariyla
birlikte 2 Mayis tarihinde Yenikoy yolu uzerinden Dogu'ya cekilirken
yol uzerinde rastladiklari 300 kadar silahsiz ve mudafaasiz Turk halkini
katliam ettikleri ve yaktiklari yazilmistir.
Ermeniler Turk ordusunun baskisi altinda Erzurum'dan cekildikten sonra
burada oldurulmus bir cok halka tesaduf edilmistir. Bu zavallilar
gorulmemis olarak yollarin uzerinde yatmakta idiler. Sokaklardan, evlerden,
dukkanlardan, bahcelerden ve ahirlardan toplattirilarak 312 ceset
defnedilmistir. Bunlarin icinde yirmisi kadin, 71'i on yasina kadar
muhtelif cocuk, 19 beyaz sakalli ihtiyarlar vardi, geri kalan 202 kisi
genc erkeklerden ibaretti.
Rus yuzbasisi Kazimir ifadesinde yalniz kendisinin, 800 Turkun sehit
edildigini gozleriyle gormus oldugunu bildirmistir. Bu rapor da Vehib
Pasa tarafindan Baskomutanliga bildirilmistir.
Erzincan, Bayburt, Torul, Gumushane, Vakfikebir, Akcaabad sehir ve
kasabalari bir katliam sahnesi halini almistir. Erzincan ve Bayburt'ta
bulunan Ermeni elebasilarindan Murat ve Arsak adindaki caniler bu son
gunlerde binlerce islam halki evlere doldurark yakmislar ve bir coklarini
da feci bir sekilde sungulemislerdir.
Ermeniler, Sarikamis yolunda calisan 500 Turk askerini katletmislerdir.
Ahil Kelek'te Ermeniler 10,000 muslumani katletmislerdir.
Erivan vilayetinde 40 koy yakilmistir. Ermenilerin Rusya dahilindeki
Azerbaycan muslumanlarini da katliam ettikleri alinan son haberlerden
ogrenilmistir.
Ermeniler Ilica nahiyesinde de cok katliam yapmislar, 365 erkek sungulenmis,
kuyulardan da 15 kadin cesedinin cikarildigi ve sokaklarda analari, babalari
oldurulmus kimsesiz cocuklara rastlandigi Baskomutanlik vekaletine raporla
bildirilmistir."
A. Alper Gazigiray, _Muslim Archival Material on the Genocide
Perpetrated by the Armenians Against the Muslim people in Eastern
Anatolia,_ Gozen Kitabevi, Istanbul, 1982.
pp. 382-383.
"3 uncu Ordu Komutani Vehib Pasa da verdigi raporda, Rus uniformali
Ermeni cetelerinin Turk koylerini bastigi ve kadinlarin irzlarina
gectikleri ve katliam yaptiklari bildirilmisti. Yine Vehip Pasa'nin
bildirdigine gore; Torol'un uc kilometre kadar guneyindeki bir Turk
koyunu Ermeni ceteleri basarak evleri yakmislar ve halki da katliam
etmislerdir. Ayrica Erzincan'in 18 kilometre guney dogusunda Zeggic
koyunun de evleri yakilmis ve halki katledilmistir.
Ucuncu Ordu Komutanligina yazilan bir raporda da; 'Rus ordusunun geri
alinan kisimlari yerine gecen Ermenilerin Islam halka mezalim ve
iskence yaptiklari ve bir cok yerlerde katliamlara basladiklari
ogrenilmistir.' denilmektedir.
Ermeniler Erzincan'da halkin evlerinden disari cikmalarini ve bir
koyden diger bir koye gitmelerini siddetle yasaklamislar ve suclu
diye evlerden topladiklari Turkleri suraya buraya goturup oldurdukleri
cesetleri ozellikle kiliseler civarinda actiklari cukurlara gomdukleri
anlasilmistir.
Bu hal gosteriyor ki Ermeniler Turk varligini yok etmege azmetmis
bulunmaktadirlar.
Kars ve havalisinden cekilen Ermenilerin Gumru ve Revan (Erivan)
taraflarindaki Islam halkin mezalim ve iskencelerle olduruldugu Birinci
Kolordu Komutanligindan bildirilmistir.
Yakup Sevki Pasa yazdigi raporda; 'Ermeniler kamilen kaciyorlar,
biraktiklari bolgede hayat kalmamistir. Bunlarin simdiye kadar doktugu
kan, yaktigi can ve sondurdugu ocaklar oyle buyuk bir dereceye
varmistir ki, tarife imkan yoktur.' diyor.
...Gece sabaha karsi Vahit Beyin konaginda 1500'e yakin musluman
toplanmisti. Ermeniler konagin her tarafini atese verdiler. Yanmamak
icin kendilerini pencereden atmak isteyenler konagi abluka etmis
bulunan Ermenilerin kursun ve sungusu ile olduruldu (13 Nisan).
Bugunlerde Ermeniler, Kal'a kislasina ve uc buyuk konaga kadin, cocuk
doldurarak yaktilar ve sehir icinde 1000 kadar ev tahrib edilmis ve
yakilmistir. Ermeniler, halki imha etmek icin toplarken evlere
kapilari kirarak zorla girmisler ve kadinlarin namuslarina tecavuz
etmislerdir.
Ucuncu Ordu Komutani Vehib Mehmet Pasa tarafindan Baskomutanliga
yazilan bu raporda Ermenilerin Turkleri tamamen imha etmege karar
vermis olduklari da bildirilmektedir."
A. Alper Gazigiray, _Muslim Archival Material on the Genocide
Perpetrated by the Armenians Against the Muslim people in Eastern
Anatolia,_ Gozen Kitabevi, Istanbul, 1982.
pp. 267-268.
"Van'dan sonra ilk isyan Sebinkarahisar'da basladi. 1915 senesi 5
haziran da, Sivasli Murat [Hamparsum Boyaciyan - uta] denilen bir
caninin emri altinda 500 kadar cete Sebinkarahisari basti. Burasi o
zaman en onemli askeri bir yerdi. Erzurum bolgesinde Rus ordusu ile
savasan Osmanli Ordularinin butun ikmal araclari buradan gecmekte idi.
Ermeniler boyle onemli bir yer isgal ettikleri takdirde Turk
ordularinin ikmali yapilamayacak ve Rus Ordularinin harekati
kolaylasacakti. Sebinkarahisarin islam mahalleleri tamamen atese
verildi. Her rastlanan Turk iskence ile olduruldu.
Mus'da ayni sekilde isyan devam ediyordu. Sason daglari Ermeni
eskiyalariyla dolu idi. Bu isyanlari, ordunun arkasini vurmak ve Rus
Ordusunun ilerlemesini saglamak icin Ermenilerin pasa dedikleri Rupen
idare ediyordu. Bundan baska, Rus Ordularinin Rus - Turk sinirindan
gecerek Turk topraklarina girdikleri bu safhada Rus Ordusu icinde
bulunan Ermeni gonullu alaylariyla Rus Ordularinin isgali altina giren
Ermeni koylerindeki silahli halk, Turk koylerine hucum ederek bu
koyleri yakip yikmislar ve Turk halkini hatira gelmeyen mezalim ve
iskence ile oldurmulerdir. [Yet another annoying picture of the
slaughtered innocent Muslim children by the Armenians]
p. 285.
"Bu suretle sehirde 23 gun cok kanli olaylar cereyan etti, bu sure
sonunda Van, Ermeniler tarafindan tamamen isgal olundu. Buradan
kacabilen Turklerin, Ermenilerin davranislari hakkinda verdikleri
haberler tuyler urpertici idi. Cunku isyancilar halkin cogunu oldurmus,
kadinlarin irzina gecmis, Turk kadin ve kizlarini bazi evlerde
topladiktan sonra buralarini Genelev haline getirmislerdir. O zaman
Van'da 1500 kadar kadin ve cocuktan baska Turk kalmamis, bunlari da
oradaki Amerikalilar korumustur. Sehir bastan basa harab olmus, carsi
kamilen yanmisti."
A. Alper Gazigiray, _Muslim Archival Material on the Genocide
Perpetrated by the Armenians Against the Muslim people in Eastern
Anatolia,_ Gozen Kitabevi, Istanbul, 1982.
pp. 260-261.
"Van isyaninda gerek Van sehri ve civari Ermenilere birakildigi zaman,
gerek Turk halkinin yollarda kacarken maruz kaldigi facianin toplami
hakkinda, bunca arastirmalara ragmen tam ve kesin bir bilgi elde
edilememistir. Fakat yukarda isaretlendigi gibi yalniz Van sehri
halkindan 10,000 Turk oldugune gore, civardaki kasaba ve koylerden
kacan halktan da en asagi 20,000 Turkun oldurulmus oldugu kabul
edilebilir.
Van isyani, Turk milleti icin unutulacak bir olay degildir. O, erkek,
kadin, ihtiyar, cocuk on binlerce cana nasil kiyilmis oldugunu
gosteren cok acikli bir trajedi sahnesidir. En buyuk bir facia, en
buyuk bir vahset ve cinayet sahnesidir.
Sefalet o derecede idi ki 1915 senesinin yaz aylarinda bir yandan tifo,
tifus, dizanteri ve kolera gibi bulasici hastaliklar; ote yandan aclik,
halkin bircogunun yollarda perisan olmasina sebebiyet veriyor ve
yollar cesetlerle dolmus bulunuyordu. Yiyecek temini, bir sey bulmak
mumkun olmadigi gibi icecek su dahi yoktu. Cunku 70 km. uzunlugundaki
Bitlis deresi, cekilmege calisan zavalli Turklerin cesetleri ile dolu
bir halde idi. O billur gibi akan ve hayat kaynagi olan Bitlis
deresinin bircok yerleri adeta kan rengine burunmustu. Ozellikle
derenin kenarlarinda toplanmis olan su birikintilerinde yeni dogmus
yavrularin cesetlerini ve bir cok kan pihtilarini gormek ne kadar
aciydi.
Bu asil Turk milletinin geceli gunduzlu ac ve sefil bir halde yuruyen
en asagi on binlerce zavalli evlatlarini Siirt, Diyarbakir yollarinin
birlestigi, ziyaret denilen Veyselkarani Turbesinin bulundugu vadi
duzlugune geldigi zaman, durumun fecaatini buyuk bir uzuntu ile
seyrettim. Bu duzluk basi sarili, hasta yatan ve acliktan iskelet
haline gelmis insanlarla tamamen dolu idi. Inleyen bir kalabalik, bir
taraftan hastalikla mucadele ederken, diger taraftan da esyasiz ve
cirilciplak terk ettigi evini, tarlalarini ve oradan getiremedigi aile
efradini dusunerek buyuk izdirap icinde olduklari yasli gozlerinden
anlasiliyordu. Biz bu hale mi dusecektik? Her seyimizi verdigimiz,
kendilerine tamamen itimat ettigimiz bu Ermeni canileri bize bunu da
mi yapacaklardi? Diyerek agliyorlardi.
Buradan bir kisim halk Diyarbakir'a, bir kismi da Siirt'e gitmeyi
kararlastirarak bu istikametlerde yollarina devam etmeye basladilar,
kacmak lazimdi. Cunku Ermeniler Rus Ordusu ile beraber durmadan
Turkleri oldurmege geliyorlardi."
Veysel Eroglu, _The Armenian Genocide of the Muslim People in
Eastern Anatolia,_ Sebil Yayinevi, Istanbul, 1978.
p. 195.
A disgusting picture of the Muslim women and children slaughtered by
the Armenians.
"Erzurum - Ilica arasi yollar boyle mudafaasiz Turk kadin ve
cocuklarinin parcalanmis cesetleriyle doldurulmustu."
p. 227.
Yet another vilely picture of the butchered Muslim women and children
by the Armenians.
"Kars'ta Ermeni komiteleri tarafindan birbirlerine baglanarak katledilen
masumlar."
p. 183.
"Ruslardan once Terpusek'e gelen Ermeni ceteleri'nin yaptiklari yagma
ve gasp ile zulumler soylemekle bitmeyecek derecede coktur. Ermeniler
genc erkekleri birer birer sokaklarda kudurmus kopekler gibi oldurmeye
ve yok etmeye basladilar. Kadinlari, alcak hareketi yaptiktan sonra
cesitli hakaretlerle vahsetlerden haric birakmadilar."
p. 210.
"Erzurum'un kuzeyine cekilen Ermeni kitalarindan bir kismi, o havaliyi
de bir katliam sahnesine cevirmislerdir. Bilhassa Erzurum'un kuzeyinde
Ergenis koyunden kadin cocuk ihtiyar demeksizin elli musluman
katledildikten sonra koy kamilen yakilmistir. Erzurum'un dogusundaki
ova koylerinde Ermeniler tarafindan pek cok kizlarin namusuna tecavuz
ve pek seni muameleler tatbik olundugu ve bir kisminin da birlikte
alinip goturuldugu anlasilmistir.
Hosan, Kalcak ahalisinden elli erkegin Kumkum'da cesetleri bulunmustur.
Makalisor koyu ahalisi ve Kumkum'daki butun erkekler yol yaptirilmak
bahanesiyle goturulmus ve bunlarin akibetleri mechul kalmistir.
Ermeniler Kumkum'u, kasabada bulunan yirmi kadin ve cocugu katlettikten
sonra terketmislerdir."
Neside Kerem Demir, _The Crime of Genocide Committed by the
Armenians Against the Muslim People,_ Hulbe Basim ve Yayin
T.A.S., Ankara, 1979.
pp. 116-117.
"Ilica kasabasindan kacamayan Turkler'in hepsinin oldurulmus oldugunu ve
kor baltalarla enselerinden kesilmis bircok cocuk cenazesi gordugunu
bizzat Odiselidze soyledi. Ilica kirginindan uc hafta sonra oradan donen
Yarbay Griyaznof, gorduklerini soyle anlatti:
'Koylere giden yollarda, uzuvlari tahrip edilmis bircok cenazeye rastladim.
Her gecen Ermeni, bu cesetlere bir kere soger ve tukururmus. 12 - 15 sajen
(25.5 - 31.9 metre) karelik cami avlusunda iki arsin (142 santim)
yuksekliginde cenaze yigilmisti. Bunlarin arasinda her yasta kadin, erkek,
cocuk ve yaslilar vardi. Kadin cenazelerinde zorla irza gecme izleri, pek
belli bir halde idi. Bircok kadin ve kizlarin tenasul yerlerine, tufek
fisegi sokulmustu...Ermeniler, bir kadini canli oldugu halde, duvara
civilemisler; sonra gogsunu oyup, basinin ustune asmislar.'"