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mukhtar Artin Chalekian, the quarter’s mayor and negotiator,
“Temporary Law of Deportation” recently passed by the government’s Central Committee that was
The Ottoman gendarmes swept the minority Christians in the east toward the south, and the ones in western towns like Adabazar eastward into less populous regions—away from the capital and the world’s gaze. Though Protestant and Catholic Armenians were spared at first in some places because of German
pressure, Greeks were deported from the coastal areas around the Sea of Marmara. Elsewhere, Christians converted to Islam in the hope of avoiding persecution.
Morgenthau
he sent another telegram on July 16, 1915, “Have you received my 841? Deportation of and excesses against peaceful Armenians is increasing and from harrowing reports of eye witnesses it appears that a campaign of race extermination is in progress under a pretext of reprisal against rebellion.”
the Miskjians carried their belongings in bohchas, square hand-stitched swaths of cloth with sticks as handles. The four corners were tied into a bow, the heavy burden slung over a shoulder or back.
Of course, these weren’t normal times, and they were lucky to have a ticket. These rides were not free, even though the government had mandated the deportation. A wealthy man had paid for the Miskjians and innumerable others. Without the benefit of such generosity, the less fortunate began their long walk toward the desiccated interior.
Ninety-two years ago, about half of Adabazar’s population of around thirty thousand people were Christian Armenians, with some Jews and Greeks. Now it was predominantly Muslim.
For thousands of years, eastern Anatolia had been their homeland; it was where the majority of the Ottoman Armenians lived. Now their houses were filled with strangers, muhajirs, Muslims displaced from the Balkan Wars, and their wealth had been requisitioned.
on August 18, 1915, this headline appeared in the New York Times: “Armenians Are Sent to Perish in Desert; Turks Accused of Plan to
Exterminate Whole Population—People of Karahissar Massacred.”
to pay twenty to forty paras,
money in Armenag’s pouch. Two hundred ghurush.
In October of 1915, the New York Times ran a series of stories about the deportations—“Spare Armenians, Pope Asks Sultan,” “Turkey Bars Red Cross”—along with reports that it was possibly too late for anyone to help: “800,000 Armenians Counted Destroyed.”
A Swiss nun rode her horse through this corridor in November 1915 and documented what she saw. “Thousands of exiles are lying out in the fields and streets without any shelter and exposed to the power of any brigands,” Sister Paula Schäfer wrote to Henry Morgenthau.
November 1, 1915, the New York Times seemed to indicate the policy was official: “Aid for Armenians Blocked by Turkey: Attempts to Send Food to Refugees Frustrated, Says the American
Committee.”
the Kelime-i Shehadet.” She was referring to the Muslim declaration of faith.
“Hayr,” I said in Turkish, one of the few words I knew—no.
Isn't it yok?
Finishing his orison,
???
Congress declared October 21 and 22, 1916, “Armenian and Syrian Relief Days.” It was an effort to raise money for the Armenians “in view of the misery, wretchedness and hardships, which these people are suffering.”
Lightning, or Yïldïrïm.
prompted the cabinet of the Young Turks to resign. The men who had come to power on a platform of equality and then orchestrated one of the worst ethnic slaughters in modern history had stepped down. On October 30, 1918, the Turkish war seemed to be over.
Nearly two weeks later, after the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Germans signed an armistice with the Allies, officially concluding the Great War on November 11, 1918.
Nevertheless, punishment for the Armenian crimes seemed imminent. “Sultan Searching Out Authors of Killings” reported the New York Times, and “Millions Slain by Turks.” As the Ottoman parliament was officially dissolved, another headline promised a “Court-Martial to Try Officials Responsible for Massacres.”
but it was the landing of Greek troops in mid-1919 at the behest of the Allies that sparked the greatest dread; they feared that the Greeks would remain beyond their mandate and claim the land. An estimated two hundred thousand people protested in the capital, and General Mustafa
Kemal, a Gallipoli hero, led a revolutionary party known as the Nationalists to take control.
With the capture of Adabazar, Nationalists killed nearly 80 percent of the six hundred Armenians remaining in town.
The Assyrians also suffered terribly during the genocide with estimates of 275,000 casualties.
The victory over the Greeks in the War of Independence paved the way for Mustafa Kemal’s dream. Following the signing of the Treaty of Lausanne on July 24, 1923, Turkey became a new country and Mustafa Kemal its first president.
Atatürk—“Father of the Turks”—and
Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, proclaimed a “caliphate” in this region in 2014,
in 2009, two hundred Turkish intellectuals bravely launched the “I Apologize” campaign online, which quickly gathered tens of thousands of signatures to the proclamation “My conscience does not accept the insensitivity showed to and the denial of the Great Catastrophe that the Armenians were subjected to in 1915.” The Turkish government denounced the campaign, but the movement set the stage for the largest gesture, two years after that Montebello commemoration ceremony. In 2014, just before the ninety-ninth anniversary of the killings, the then Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoghan,
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“We wish that the Armenians who lost their lives in the context of the early twentieth century rest in peace, and we convey our condolences to their grandchildren,” read his message.
the momentum toward reconciliation was lost in 2015 when Erdoghan seemed to backtrack ...
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Philip Mansel, Constantinople: City of the World’s Desire, 1453–1924 (London: John Murray, 2006),
Elise Hagobian Taft, Rebirth: The Story of an Armenian Girl Who Survived the Genocide and Found Rebirth in America (Plandome, NY: New Age Publishers, 1981),
Philip Mansel, Constantinople: City of the World’s Desire, 1453–1924 (London: John Murray, 2006),
W. J. Childs, “Greeks Drive Turks from Eski-shehr,” New York Times, March 30, 1921; Edwin L. James, “Kemal Menaces British Forces,” New York Times, April 2, 1920.
