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The Ittibat Terraki (the Committee
of Union and Progress) began its pro
gram of Pan-Turkism with the Greek
I
deportations of May, 1914, and
crowned it somewhat more than two
years later by the extinction of the
Armenian survivors at the Euphrates
slaughter-house at Der-el-Zor. It
cannot be too often re-stated that
these atrocities had nothing what
ever to do with religious intolerance
as between Christian and Moslem
peoples, except indeed as a political
means of fomenting the latter against
the former. The “white masacres”
were simply the Ittibat Terraki’s
method of crippling two thrifty peo
ples which, by their commercial dom
inance and superior acumen, barred
the realization of a “Turkey for the
Turks.” That the Greeks were sup
posed to be in league writh the British
fleet off the Dardanelles, or that the
Ottoman Armenians were supposed
to be in league with Russia, is pure
political camouflage. Whatever spor
adic instances in the latter case may
lend weight to the Ittibat Terrain's
pronouncement of a “military neces
sity” therein, the vast number of de
portees and dead reveals unmistaka
bly that the crippling of whole peo
ples was aimed at.
Of Greeks, some 795,000 were sent
into exile; of Armenians, not less
than a million were deported and, as
a result of 1915’s frightful massacres,
half a million more fled into the Cau
casus. This makes a total displace
ment of about 2,300,000 for the two
peoples. The best present estimates
indicate that about 600,000 Greeks
perished by massacre, starvation and
exposure; and when the whole story
is known it will probably be found
that the Ittibat Terraki is responsi
ble for the obliteration of a million
human beings.
Wholesale Deportation
The procedure with the Greeks was
to oust them at a few hours’ notice,
transport them into the interior as
far as Caesarea, Sivas, and Angora,
and decentralize them by a wide dis
tribution through the Moslem vil
lages. A large part of this “white
massacre” occurred in winter, expo
sure and starvation being relied upon
to do their work. Child-stealing and
the abduction of young girls, to swell
Islam's future generations, were com
monly perpetrated as the columns of j
deportees wound eastward through
Asia’s snows. Meanwhile, their emp
tied houses were sold for firewood,
or ere*occupied by Moslem families
of the refugee hordes which swarmed
into Turkey from Bulgaria and the
Caucasus. The Tttibat Terrain’s pro-1
gram of re-Turkeyfying Turkey on
the absent-tenant principle, had be- i
gun. Those deportees who have re
turned home since the armistice have j
found either burned villages, orchards I
and vineyards, or Moslem squatters'
who, having sold the absentee’s j
flocks and herds, are firmly in
trenched in their homes. The very
cemeteries in many of these evacuat
ed towns have been robbed of their
gravestones for the manufacture of
lime.
The story of 1915’s Bloody Trek is
already familiar to Americans. That
Turkish epithet, the rayah, or herd of
cattle, becomes perfectly visualized as
we watch the interminable columns
of humanity being driven across the
desert. But it is only since the arm
istice that some few gaunt survivors
have returned to tell of the “herd’s”
ending at the slaughter-house of Del
el-Zor.
Horrible Condition
This Turco-Arabian town, situated
ten days’ journey beyond the rail
head in a shadeless, rock-strewn
desert, with the slimy Euprhates ooz
ing past, had been augmented up to
July, 1916, by some 150,000 Armen
ians. They, the remnant of a million
deportees, represented the survivors
of those successive parties which had
been driven eastward during fifteen
months. Huddled under tents of tat
tered blankets, existing on pounded
date stones, and even washing their
excrement in search of food particles,
this ghastly crew of emaciated, half
nude wretches—comparable to the
damned in some Dantean hell—sat
day-long, dull-eyed and with parched
lips and protruding tongues, awaiting
the final act of their nation’s tragedy.
Presently the local governor, having
failed to “lighten the Armenians”—
as the telegraphic massacring-order
ran—was replaced by one Salib Zeki,
a Circassian, and the Ittibat Terraki’s
specially picked man.
A Brutal Governor
“Why do you suffer these Armen
ians to live among you?” he asked,
upon arriving at Der-el-Zor. “They
will monopolize your country; and
therefore I have been sent here to at
tend to them.” He gathered together
five hundred Circassian tcbetes—as
sassins—and four days later the public
crier announced that all Armenians
must evacuate the town. Day after
day successive bands of a few thous
and each were marched out on either
side of the Euphrates and despatched
by fire, sword, drowning, and live
burial. In the killing of these wretch
ed creatures the massacrers searched
every part of their bodies for hidden
jewels—even gold dental work was
removed from their mouths—and
those w’ho were supposed to have
swallowed valuables were cut open
and their intestines searched.
A Refugee's Story
One young man who escaped to
tell his story, fled for a whole day
and night through a continuous scene
of after-massacre. There were pyra
mids of heads with human trunks sur
rounding them, the men’s ears having
been sliced off and their eyes gouged
out. The women’s stomachs were cut
open; their severed heads hung by
the hair from the tops of set up poles,
and often to their slashed-off breasts
there still clung a dead baby. The
children had been cleft up the mid
dle by one stroke, as if in a prefatory
test of the sword's sharpness. The
sexual mutilations were indescriba
ble. Many of the men lay face down
ward, with two great transverse cuts
across the back, suggestive of a
cross. By day the refugee heard vic
tims’ cries resounding from far off in
the desert, and by night his way was
lit by distant flares which betokened
some hecatomb of petroleum-soaked
corpses. Once he passed a shrieking
crowd of fugitives who, having es
caped, had apparently gone hunger
crazed, and were tearing each other
to pieces.
Reaching the Euphrates, he swam,
or rather climbed, through its blood
red waters, across a solid log-jam of
bodies. These victims had been tied
together in groups of four, and cast
in to drown. Wandering onward and
living on grass for four days, he came
upon a Der-el-Zor deportation-band
of twelve thousand women and chil
dren, all absolutely naked, awaiting
further orders. Presently Zeki Bey
arrived.
Wanted No Live Witness
“Do you save these wretches so that
they may make known the massacres
to the world?” he demanded of the
tcbetes. And accordingly the twelve
thousand were butchered next day—
Zeki Bey watching through his field
glasses from a distance—and their
petroleum-soaked bodies were burned
that night, lighting the desert like a
torch, as the fugitive fled onward.
Another survivor of Der-el-Zor—a
young married woman who had bur
ied her three children, one after an
other, during the deportation—des
cribes being driven out into the
desert amid a band of some two
thousand Armenians. Soon a crowd
of Circassian horsemen, dressed in
white and armed with swords and
daggers, galloped down the hills to
wards them. Their bodja (priest),
having performed some kind of re
ligious ceremony in front of his band,
divided the waiting victims into two
groups—men and boys over eleven
in one group, women and children un
der eleven in the other. The men
and boys were made to kneel and to
repeat three times, “Long live the
Sultan!” Then the horsemen dashed
upon them with uplifted swords.
There was a terrible outcry of groans
and screams. Some of the women
fainted, and the rest rushed blindly
across the desert. Everywhere they
came upon corpses. Some of these,
locked in each other’s arms, had met
death together. Dead mothers lay
with dead babies still at their breasts.
There was one great circle of men
and women, who having first been
bound, then buried upright in sand to
their shoulders, had thus perished of
hunger and thirst.
Like a Second Nero
In a few days these survivors saw
band after band driven out of Der-el
Zor along the Euphrates’ opposite
bank and massacred, while Zeki Bey
watched from his balcony near by,
smoking a cigarette and applauding
the work. Then after two weeks,
during which they lived on the flesh
of the dead, and cleared places in the
corpse-choked river to drink from,
the women were rounded up, stripped
naked, and divided among the Circas
sians—those not so chosen being
thrown into deep pits to die. The
narrator of this account was taken
(Continued on Page Three)
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