Материал: Payaslian S., The History of Armenia From the Origins to the Present

were forcibly walked out of Kharpert, Mezre, and Hiusenig on their journey south to Urfa, Ras ul-Ain, and Deir el-Zor. Over the next several days a second and larger convoy of 6,000 Armenians left Kharpert.89 Viewing the events in the streets, American evangelist missionary Tacy Atkinson noted in her diary: “What an awful sight. People shoved out of their houses, the doors nailed, and they were piled into oxcarts or on donkeys and many on foot. Police and gendarmes armed, shoving them along.”90

Contrary to the claims by the Young Turk regime that the “deportations” were emergency measures necessitated by wartime security, there were no military threats to the province of Angora (Ankara) when the mass deportations and massacres began there. Its Armenian community was one of the most assimilated into the Turkish political culture, but its members met a similar fate as their compatriots in the eastern provinces. In late July, under direct orders from the Ittihadist Miralay Halil Rejayi Bey, the commander of the Fifth Army Corps headquartered at Ankara, notices were posted throughout the city of Kesaria announcing the removal within ten days of all the Armenians, with the exception of Catholics. Similar notices in Talas announced the deportation date to be within five days. And on August 5 the first caravan of Armenians marched out of Kesaria. The combined total number of Armenians deported from Kesaria and Talas was about 20,000. Only a small number chose conversion to Islam.91 According to the government directive, the stores of the deported were to be closed and kept under government seal, while the sale of all movable goods would be supervised by local authorities. As soon as the mass deportations commenced, however, the Armenian neighborhoods were pillaged and plundered. Accused of conspiracy to favor Russian support for a military liberation of Armenians in the Ottoman empire, Bishop Pehrikian was subsequently deported, together with a caravan of hundreds of refugees, and murdered along with several other prominent figures.92 Caravans of refugees marched to Aleppo, Ras ul-Ain, and Deir el-Zor.93

The region of Konia became a central station for refugees arriving by rail and land from the western and northern provinces. Refugees from the west came from as far away as Adrianople (Edirne) and Rodosto (Tekirdagh) in the province of Adrianople, from Izmid and Adabazar, Brusa and Eskishehir, on their way to Afion Karahisar and Konia. At times, as the ever-increasing number of caravans converged at Konia, between 40,000 and 50,000 refugees were pressed into thousands of tents within and on the outskirts of the city. By mid-July, the authorities had begun to deport the Armenians from Konia to Aleppo.94 During the first two weeks of September, thousands of refugees from towns and villages in the sanjak (county) of Izmid, the province of Brusa, and the city of Angora joined the 11,000–16,000 refugees from Afion Karahisar on their

march to the south and southeast. They gathered along the railway tracks with refugees from Eskishehir (12,000 to 15,000 refugees), Alayund (5,000), Chai (2,000), for some 200 miles to Konia to be joined by 5,000 to 10,000 additional refugees in cattle trucks if fortunate, but mostly on foot to Bozanti and thence to the Syrian desert.95

Those close to the Turko-Russian front were able to escape to the Caucasus. Near the end of 1915 approximately 170,000 had passed through Igdir, the first major town on the Russian side, while more than 18,000 refugees had passed through Kars and an equal number moved to Julfa. The entire region between Igdir and Echmiadzin, a distance of nearly 19 miles, was covered with refugees seeking safety. About 20,000 refugees remained in Igdir, 35,000 in Echmiadzin, and 20,000 in Erevan. By early 1916, an estimated 300,000 refugees had sought refuge in the Caucasus. An estimated 40,000 Armenians died during their journey to the Caucasus. Starvation and disease led to the death of 340 to 400 refugees per day.96

The enormity of the deportations as implemented since early 1915 indicated a vast administrative mechanism for the systematic destruction of the Armenian people in their historic homeland. The process of deportations and massacres culminated in the annihilation of the Armenian nation as it had existed for centuries across the Armenian Plateau. Morgenthau estimated that between April and October 1915, nearly 1.2 million Armenians were deported from their homeland to the Syrian desert, the primary destination for the refugees. Aleppo served as the clearinghouse for the Armenian refugees from Anatolia on their way to the desert.97 By one estimate, the total number of Armenian refugees converged at Deir el-Zor reached as high as 350,000.98 U.S. Consul Jesse Jackson reported from Aleppo that by August 15, 1915, more than 500,000 Armenians had been killed. In November he commented on the severity of treatment the surviving refugees received at the hands of “hostile tribesman” and escorting soldiers, and estimated that those who survived constituted no more than 15 percent of the total 1 million lives lost.99

When the victorious Allied powers signed the Mudros Armistice on October 30, 1918, which concluded the war with Turkey, the defeated Young Turk regime collapsed and some of its leaders fled the country. Turkish Pan-Turkish aspirations appeared to have come to an end. The Allied Powers organized a new government headed by Grand Vizier Damad Ferid Pasha, while keeping Sultan Mehmed VI on the throne. The postwar Ottoman parliament repealed the Temporary Law of Deportations on November 4, 1918, and under Allied pressure commenced the trials of the perpetrators of the genocide. Found guilty by the military tribunals, some of the Ittihadist leaders were sentenced to death in absentia.100

Part IV

Independence, Modernization,

and Globalization

and engagement in Armenian affairs. The tsarist government’s positive responses to the Armenian plight, as demonstrated in the negotiations for the 1914 reforms in Ottoman Armenia and the military support in Van in 1915, reaffirmed the belief held widely among Armenians in the Ottoman empire that Russian geopolitical interests would lead to more direct involvement in the region. The tsarist regime retained its repressive rule over Russian Armenia, but Armenians in the eastern provinces of the Ottoman empire had come to rely on the same tsarist government for diplomatic and, in times of war, for military support against Turkish atrocities. The maliciously abnormal geopolitical conditions created by the Young Turk genocidal policies did not afford Armenian leaders in the Caucasus—even the very few capable ones—the luxury of diplomatic dexterity to cultivate good relations with the neighboring powers. The antitsarist political upheavals emanating from St. Petersburg and Moscow and the turbulence and bloodshed in Transcauasia exacerbated the situation for the Armenians.

The Russian revolutionary movement forced the last Romanov tsar, Nicholas II, to abdicate the throne on March 15, 1917, and installed the Provisional Government led by the more democratically oriented Prince Georgy E. Lvov as prime minister; Pavel Milyukov, foreign minister; Aleksandr Guchkov, war minister; Aleksandr Kerenski, justice minister, and others. Despite their apprehensions regarding the revolutionary movement, and very much like their compatriots in the Ottoman Empire during the Young Turk revolution in 1908, Armenians welcomed the March Revolution with expectations for political democratization and economic modernization.2 Local peasants’ and workers’ councils (soviets) were established in anticipation of the formation of a representative government with the requisite institutional mechanisms for expansive participatory democracy. The Provisional Government promised democratic reforms but avoided issues of nationality and territory, insisting instead that the All-Russian Constituent Assembly would address such issues after the upcoming elections.3 In this environment of optimism, in April 1917 Catholicos Gevorg V issued an encyclical urging the Armenian communities to respect the rights of women to political participation in national affairs and their rights to vote for and to be elected into offices. Women’s involvement in various facets of political and economic affairs, Gevorg V averred, was essential for development and progress. He noted that the Armenian Church for centuries had recognized the equality of men and women but that foreign cultural influences had led to a transmutation of Armenian culture, thereby undermining the relationship between the church and the community.4

The peoples of the Caucasus, who had often accused the tsarist government of too frequently relying on divide-and-conquer strategies, soon