Initially the interactions between the Russian military authorities and the Muslim population were strained. The military command had ordered "the deportation of all Kurds from the occupied areas."45 Yet, the situation was changing in 1916. Continuous negotiations with French and British representatives regarding the future division of the Ottoman Empire into infuence zones resulted in a compromise (the Sykes-Picot-Sazonov agreement) according to which after the war imperial Russia would keep control over Erzurum, Bitlis, Van, and Trabzon *vilayets*. 46 This was a major turning point that shaped the Russian approach to the occupied eastern territories of the Ottoman Empire and its attitude to various peoples—especially Armenians and Kurds—living within those areas. Annexation was an actual plan, confrmed by the Great Powers, and not a mere probability. The Russian Foreign Minister Sazonov's correspondence with the Caucasus Viceroy Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich (July 1916) demonstrates his concern for the organization of the occupied regions and the establishment of certain guidelines for future governance of the territories and equal treatment of the populations—both Christian and Muslim—residing there.47 Tsarist offcials' desire to ensure equal treatment of Christians and Muslims in the region, as we shall see, was not shared by all the offcials and agencies working with the refugees. Furthermore, this approach eventually led to new complications. The

44 Ibid, 164 (ob).

45Halit D. Akarca, *Imperial Formations in Occupied Lands: the Russian Occupation of Ottoman Territories During the First World War*, unpublished dissertation (Princeton University, June 2014)*,* 50. For Russian-Kurdish relations at the beginning of war see: Mikhail S. Lazarev, *Kurdskiı vopros (1891–1917)* ̆ (Moscow: "Nauka," 1972), 321–326.

46*Razdel Aziatskoı Turtsii* ̆ : *Po sekretnym dokumentam b. ministerstva inostrannykh del,* Evgenii Adamov, ed., (Moscow, 1924), 200.

47*Razdel Aziatskoı Turtsii* ̆ , 209; Peter Holquist, "Forms of Violence during the Russian Occupation of Ottoman Territory and Northern Persia (Urmia and Astrabad), October 1914–December 1917," in Omer Bartov, and Eric Weitz, eds., *Shatterzone of Empires: Coexistence and Violence in the German, Habsburg, Russian, and Ottoman Borderlands* (D. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013), 339, and "The Politics and Practice of the Russian Occupation in Armenia, 1915 – 1917 February," 157–158.

Armenian survivors of Kurdish and Turkish attacks raised questions and complaints: they were confused and appalled by that new behavior of Russian authorities.48

#### *Erzurum*

Erzurum was not among the regions Strelkov was sent to investigate. Nonetheless, he found it important to examine the condition of refugees and report about the relief efforts there, too, since "depending on future developments, possibly, some refugees might have to be transferred there from frontline areas."49 Maksimov, the Head of the Civil Administration of Erzurum, reported, that one of his major tasks was the relocation of the populations from areas within 10 *verst* of military operations to villages close to Erzurum.50 Maksimov emphasized that the relocation was terrible for the people who were forced to move, and also for the Erzurum population: in addition to their own problems, they had to feed and assist the newcomers.51

The situation of Muslims, according to Maksimov, was the worst. There were about 10,000 refugees in need of assistance and the Muslim Benevolent Society did not provide it despite many appeals for help.52 The Caucasus army command furnished 100,000 rubles to the Military Governor General of Turkish territories occupied by right of war in order to fght against epidemics and starvation in this region.53 However, the latter's reaction to Maksimov's request to help the Muslim population was negative: "such assistance was categorically denied."54 Chief Plenipotentiary Tamamshev received complaints (June 1916) from the Baku Muslim Society's plenipotentiary Dr. Sultanov regarding the uneven distribution and sometimes lack of aid to Muslims in other areas as well, including

51 *Ibid.* See also: Peter Holquist, "The Policies and Practice of the Russian Occupation of Armenia, 1915-February 1917," 171.

52 SSSA, f. 520, op. 1, d. 37, 180(3).

54 Ibid.

48Asya Darbinyan, "Recovering the Voices of Armenian Refugees in Transcaucasia …," 8–9. 49 SSSA, f. 520, op. 1, d. 37, 165.

50Following the occupation of Erzurum, a Civil Administration was established in the region (13 February 1916), headed by Maksimov. In September 1916 he submitted a report about the tasks and achievements of his administration. (See SSSA, f. 520, op. 1, d. 37, 180(7)).

53 Ibid, 180 (3, ob).

Trabzon and Erivan (Yerevan). Sultanov had even warned Tamamshev that he might contact the Caucasus Viceroy directly, relying on the Grand Duke's "sympathetic attitude towards the Muslim population."55 These discrepancies in the provision of assistance shed light on the complexity of the relief networks in the empire. While, as mentioned before, some tsarist offcials, such as Foreign Minister Sazonov and the Grand Duke, insisted on equal treatment of all refugees and intended to modify the relief work according to the changing political concerns of the Russian Empire, other military offcials or local administrators refused to transfer and distribute funds to Muslim organizations and institutions.

Meanwhile, in the case of Armenian refugees, only a verbal order was given to assist their evacuation from Erzurum to the Caucasus. Due to the lack of a formal written document or passes, the evacuation was not possible to carry out. The Civil Administration had to contact the Chief Plenipotentiary Tamamshev and the Armenian Central Committee, to fnd solutions.56 Thus, even though the work on behalf of Armenian refugee was not as disputed as the relief for Muslim refugees, the assistance could still be inconsistent and problematic.

There was no special central committee to assist refugees in the town of Erzurum, nor in the region. A local Armenian committee chaired by Sedrak Ananyan, who also was the supervisor of the food-station established by the VSG, coordinated most of the work. Dr. Zavriev, an Armenian physician and activist, was also engaged with these relief efforts (Fig. 1).57 He appealed to the Army Commander to allow refugees to settle in "vacant" Armenian villages and harvest half of the crop for their use, just as it was organized in the Erzincan and Bayburt regions. After receiving

55 SSSA, f. 520, op. 1, d. 32, 18; Also see: Halit D. Akarca, *Imperial Formations in Occupied Lands*, 116.

56 SSSA, f. 520, op. 1, d. 37, 180(4).

57Dr. Hakob Zavriev (Zavrean, in some Armenian language fles) was a member of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF). He participated in formation of voluntary regiments when the war on the Caucasus battlefront erupted and he served as a physician together with the volunteers. He also established connections with Russian military and civil authorities at the frontlines and in Petrograd. Dr. Zavriev's was involved in diplomatic correspondence and negotiations with representatives of various European states to raise awareness about the Armenian cause. (See HAA, f. 503, op. 1, d. 7, 11-12; ARF Archives, 1872/37/1914, Personal Papers, Dr. Zavrean Hakob; Asya Darbinyan, "Recovering the Voices of Armenian Refugees in Transcaucasia …," 4, 29; *Razdel Aziatskoı Turtsii* ̆ , 135; Ruben Sahakyan, "Pastat'ght'er Yakov Zavrievi arkhivits'," in *Historical-Philological Journal*, No. 2 (Yerevan, 2011), 273).

the Russian authorities' response, he realized the risks of misunderstanding and antagonism regarding the rules related to land and farming between the local Russian administration and the Armenian peasants. To prevent any such issues, Dr. Zavriev developed a directive listing the peasants' rights and responsibilities. It emphasized that the peasants were to harvest crops only from those felds identifed by the Russian authorities and they were obliged to deliver half of the harvest to the government's storehouse.58 He also collected funds from the local Armenian population to purchase livestock for the refugees.59 As we see, once again, local individuals and committees had to work hand in hand with Russian organizations and military authorities to ensure continuity of relief efforts and to avoid complications that could potentially cause delays and cost lives.

In the meantime, the cost to transport supplies to Erzurum (mostly from Sarikamish) was very high. Food supplies for each refugee cost twice or even three times more than normal.60 Moreover, in the fall, providing supplies would become even harder because of the deteriorating weather conditions. Strelkov saw the solution in the establishment of a food depot

58HAA, f. 503, op. 1, d. 77, 6(ob)–8.

59 SSSA, f. 520, op. 1, d. 37, 165 (ob).

60 Ibid, 166.

in Erzurum by the Armenian Benevolent Society and the Central Committee, considering their successful experience in handling food provision in other regions.61

Medical assistance to the refugees in Erzurum was provided by the Moscow Armenian Committee, which had opened a hospital there run by Military Doctor Bagdasarov, together with one female paramedic and two female nurses. Nonetheless, conditions were far from ideal. There was no separate department in the hospital for the contagious patients. Furthermore, children and adults were treated together, since there was no pediatric department. There was neither enough equipment nor enough clothes at the hospital.62 Instead of opening a new hospital run by the VSG in the region, Strelkov, considering the fnancial restrictions, advised the Moscow Armenian Committee to use the available funds to hire a special doctor to supervise the existing hospital, and to equip it with the necessary tools, thus improving the quality of care.63 Sharing Strelkov's view with regard to the medical emergency and the condition of the Erzurum hospital, General Tamamshev appealed to Mamikonyan of the Moscow Committee to "pay closer attention to the unsatisfactory condition" of the hospital and to "take all the necessary measures for its improvement and expansion."64

According to reports of contemporary newspapers, in May 1916, the population of Erzurum was 28,000, of whom 9,554 were Turks [Muslim refugees] who had arrived from surrounding areas, 503 were Armenians from Mamakhatun, Derjan, Kghi and Alashkert, 327 local Armenians from various villages, and there were another 350 Armenian refugees in Erzurum.65 By 9 August 1916, the Armenian committee reported that there were 850 Armenian refugees in thirty-one villages of the Erzurum region: 750 of them were in the town of Erzurum, including 200 orphans.66 Toward the end of August, the number of orphans had already increased to 300 in Erzurum, as the population movement from Erzincan did not stop. By late September, another 114 orphans had arrived and needed a transfer to the Caucasus.67 Arriving in Erzurum, refugee orphans were

61 SSSA, f. 520, op. 1, d. 37, 180(4).

62 SSSA, f. 520, op. 1, d. 37, 166.

63 Ibid.

64 SSSA, f. 520, op. 1, d. 53, 152.

65*Horizon*, Tifis, No 169, 31 July 1916, 1; *Van-Tosp*, Tifis, No. 26, 22 May 1916, 16.

66 SSSA, f. 520, op. 1, d. 37, 165 (ob).

67 See SSSA, f. 520, op. 1, d. 87, 137; 242.

sheltered in the orphanages of the Moscow Armenian Committee and the VSG. The local Armenian committee, with the support of Dr. Zavriev, had requested permission to establish an orphanage in village of Dzitogh, 12 *verst* away from Erzurum, as appropriate buildings for that purpose were available at that location.68 The main obstacle to establishing that orphanage was the high price of products, which could be solved with the help of donations.

When Tamamshev received the request for a new orphanage close to Erzurum, he was also informed by the Commander of the 1st Army Corps General Kalitin, that honorary secretary Bekstone of the Lord Mayor's Fund had allotted 10,000 rubles for an orphanage.69 If it were to be established near Erzurum, secretary Bekstone was authorized to transfer that amount to the respective organization, with General Tamamshev's consent. However, the general believed that their goal was to evacuate children from the Erzurum region to the Caucasus and not to settle them in the area.70 Therefore, a redistributing orphanage was set up there, to prepare the children for transfer to the Caucasus, to Elisavetpol *guberniia*. 71 General Tamamshev also supported the idea of opening workshops for women to produce wool socks, sweaters and other clothes for the army in Erzurum. Just as in Erzincan, this project was to be implemented in cooperation with the Armenian Benevolent Society.72

The correspondence between the Chief Plenipotentiary's offce and the army command regarding the involvement of the Lord Mayor's Fund to assist the refugees demonstrates the complexity of the humanitarian relief work in Transcaucasia and the occupied territories of the Ottoman Empire during the genocide and the Great War. It shows that, in addition to the multilayered and intricate structure of the imperial Russian response to the refugee crisis in the region, other international actors and institutions were engaged with extensive humanitarian activities.

68 SSSA, f. 520, op. 1, d. 37, 166 (ob); d. 87, 105–107.

69 SSSA, f. 520, op. 1, d. 37, 166 (ob). Lord Mayor's Fund was established in London (September 1915) to coordinate efforts among aid organizations assisting Ottoman Armenians, Greeks, and Assyrians. For more on British humanitarian efforts for Armenians during the Great War, see: Michelle Tusan, *The British Empire and the Armenian Genocide: Humanitarianism and Imperial Politics from Gladstone to Churchill* (London: I.B. Tauris, 2017).

70 Ibid, 174.

71 SSSA, f. 520, op. 1, d. 87, 140. In August 1916 an orphanage in Shushi (Elisavetpol) ran by the local branch of the Committee for Brotherly Aid received 10,000 rubles for orphan care by Tamamshev's order. (Ibid, d. 87, 177.)

72 SSSA, f. 520, op. 1, d. 37, 170.

### Conclusion

The assistance provided to the refugees in Erzincan, Bayburt, Erzurum and the surrounding regions in summer 1916 represented an interplay of non-state actors, such as local and international organizations and individual activists, and government entities—both military and civil. Imperial authorities and numerous agencies and organizations had begun immense relief efforts on behalf of the refugees from the very frst days of the population movements across the Russo-Turkish border. Yet the gigantic scale of assistance required and the complexity of the situation in which all these displaced people and the committees assisting them found themselves, created new challenges and obstacles to the timely and comprehensive implementation of their plans. While the plenipotentiaries and imperial administrators in charge of refugees envisioned and supervised these largescale operations from Moscow, Tbilisi and elsewhere, the situation on the ground could change rapidly with the deployments of Ottoman or Russian troops. The shifting borderline and new population movements led to the emergence of new refugee hubs and even new refugee categories, such as the discussed "special kind of refugees." They required more assistance and supervision and they put immense pressure on local populations, individual actors and organizations.

In addition to these relatively objective and operational issues, the relief workers and agencies faced a number of hardships linked to the changing agendas and differing policies of the Russian Empire's military and civil leadership toward the refugees. At the outset of the war, the Russian imperial authorities did not have a concrete vision for the eastern provinces of the Ottoman Empire. As Peter Holquist has explained, the Russian government did not have a coherent plan or project for those regions as the war raged, and annexation was not offcially considered or confrmed at that point.73 As discussed earlier, from spring 1916, after Russia joined the Sykes-Picot agreement, that attitude changed. The tsarist army successfully annexed these regions and had to make long-term plans and

73Peter Holquist, "The Politics and Practice of the Russian Occupation of Armenia, 1915 – February 1917," 154. Michael Reynolds also holds that Russia did not have any plans for those occupied territories initially, and emphasizes that, "the dynamic of global interstate competition had spurred another empire's expansion into Ottoman lands" (Michael A. Reynolds, *Shattering Empires*, 141).

adjustments. That included a shift in policies toward the local Muslim particularly Kurdish—populations.

Russian imperial policies toward all the populations in the annexed areas and the border regions were to be based on principles of justice and equality, as Minister of Foreign Affairs Sazonov had expressed, "not providing exclusive protection to any one particular nationality at the expense of the other."74 Therefore, if at some point, the Muslim relief societies complained to General Tamamshev about lack of proper fnancial assistance to refugees and especially about the military command's reluctance to help Muslims, the situation soon shifted. The Armenian refugees who had escaped the attacks of their Turkish and Kurdish neighbors on their villages, houses, families, and lives, and had settled in refugee camps or temporary places of residence, complained to the tsarist authorities. They saw how once the Kurds, who had attacked and violated them, pledged loyalty to Russia, they were pardoned and released.75

These nuances display the complex nexus of relationships between the local—both Christian and Muslim—populations and the imperial Russian government. They also demonstrate the fuctuating attitudes and policies of Russian military and civil authorities toward all these populations depending on military developments on the warfronts, the negotiations between the Russia Empire and her allies, and Russia's growing interests in the eastern provinces of the Ottoman Empire.

74*Razdel Aziatskoı Turtsii* ̆ , 209; Peter Holquist, "Forms of Violence," 339.

75Asya Darbinyan, "Recovering the Voices of Armenian Refugees in Transcaucasia …," 8–9.

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### On the Verge of Death and Survival: Krikor Bogharian's Diary

### *Ümit Kurt*

In recent decades, much important work has been done on the Armenian deportation and genocide that draws on previously inaccessible Ottoman archival materials.1 However, in the process, there has been a corresponding tendency to downplay, either explicitly or through neglect, the value of largely untapped Armenian-language source materials, including

1 Some examples to such studies: Taner Akçam, *The Young Turks' Crime Against Humanity: The Armenian Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire* (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2012); Raymond Kévorkian, *The Armenian Genocide: A Complete History* (London: I.B. Tauris, 2010); Fuat Dündar, *Crime of Numbers: The Role of Statistics in the Armenian Question (1878–1918)* (New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers, 2010); Ronald G. Suny, *They Can Live in the Desert But Nowhere Else: A History of the Armenian Genocide* (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015); Donald Bloxham, *The Great Game of Genocide: Imperialism, Nationalism, and the Destruction of the Ottoman Armenians* (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).

Ü. Kurt (\*)

University of Newcastle, Newcastle, NSW, Australia

© The Author(s) 2024 123

T. Kühne et al. (eds.), *Documenting the Armenian Genocide*, Palgrave Studies in the History of Genocide, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36753-3\_7

personal memoirs and diaries.2 Until recently, few researchers in this area have possessed the language skills to hone in on both Armenian-language and Ottoman Turkish-language materials, and as a result, scholars who rely predominantly on one set of sources have tended to marginalize the other. A more well-rounded approach that is able to make use of sources in various languages can only beneft the feld.

This chapter builds on one such document, a diary, written by a young Krikor Bogharian (1897–1975),3 that serves as a non-state primary resource, providing insight into what being a survivor meant in a genocidal moment. The diary takes us to early twentieth-century Aintab, modern-day Gaziantep, ffty-fve kilometers to the west of the Euphrates and forty-fve kilometers to the north of the modern Turkish-Syrian border. The Armenian deportation is presented as a frst-person account, through the experience of an Armenian from the city of Aintab. This chapter, based on the diary entries Bogharian penned as he struggled through this disastrous time, sheds light on the deportation experiences of Aintab Armenians. While sharing tales of extraordinary suffering faced by ordinary people who were exiled and annihilated, it narrates the stories of those who survived to tell their tale about how they trekked through the desert under unimaginable conditions. This chapter analyzes the diary and shares detailed information about both the personal and the family life of Bogharian, in addition to the suffering endured by the Armenian deportees.

Krikor Bogharian, who was deported to Aleppo, then Hama, and fnally to Salamiyya alongside his entire family, kept a diary about his life from August 11, 1915 to December 19, 1916. Bogharian's self-narration zooms in on a small area within *Bilad al-Sham*, which as a whole, is the Levant region, encompassing the Eastern Mediterranean. His entries highlight the daily struggle of the Armenian population to survive for

2Vahé Tachjian's illuminative work on diaries of two genocide survivors Krikor Bogharian and Nerses Tavukjian is an exception here. Employing these two diaries and intermeshing them with other primary and secondary sources, Tachjian revealed the story of Bogharian and Tavukjian families who went through every single process of Armenian deportation in the district of Hama and Salamiyya in the province of Syria. Vahé Tachjian, *Daily Life in the Abyss: Genocide Diaries, 1915–1918* (Oxford and New York: Berghahn Books, 2017).

3Krikor Bogharian, *Orakro'wt'iwn Darakir Geanqis*, *Ceghasban T'o'wrqy Vgah'o'wt'iwnner Qagho'wadz Hrashqo'v P'rgo'wadznero'w Zro'h'nere'n* (Diary of My Life in Exile: The Genocidal Turk: Eyewitness Accounts Culled from the accounts of People who were Miraculously Saved), ed. Toros Toromanian (Beirut: Shirag, 1973).

more than three years. The regions of Hama and Salamiyya became "home" to the largest number of Aintab Armenians, where they suffered disease, epidemics, and death.

On the eve of war, Aintab had an Armenian population that numbered somewhere between 36,000 and 40,000.4 It was urban Armenians of Aintab, in particular, who were deported to Salamiyya's agricultural district. At the time, Salamiyya, with its population of around 6000, was a district located in the southeast of Hama, some seven hours on foot from Homs. The inhabitants were predominantly members of the *Ismaili* sect, while the few Sunnis were the government offcials of the town.

Bogharian's diary is unique for its immediacy. He wrote in the heat of the moment and his entries refect the language of his time and the proximity of the events he recorded as they unfolded before his eyes on a daily basis. As Salim Tamari demonstrates in the case of Ihsan Salih Turjman's diary, Bogharian's diary is "unfltered and unreconstructed by retrospective thought."5 As a wartime document, its power lies in the way that it exposes the texture of daily life. Bogharian's diary reveals intimate aspects of the victim experience during the Armenian Genocide. The diary, with its attention to detail, proves invaluable for its depiction of local settings and what was going on at the micro level from the perspective of a deportee and it is "written with intimacy and simple but keen refections on an encircled city."6 It contains a wealth of observation on daily life in Salamiyya in 1915 and 1916. Bogharian's world was permeated by deportation and by the impending catastrophe that would include disease, starvation, forced conversion, and sexual violence committed against Armenian women and girls.

4These fgures refect Armenian, British, and French sources. Turkish sources reduce these numbers to 20,000 - 30,000. Population fgures for the Ottoman Empire have always been controversial, and the rich literature for these estimates is too extensive to list here. See some sources: Yervant Babaian (ed.), *Badmo'wt'iwnt Ah'nt'abi Hah'o'c* (History of Aintab Armenians) vol. III (LA, Union of the Armenians of Aintab: April Publishers, 1994), 11–12; Kevork A. Sarafan, *A Briefer History of Aintab: A concise history of the cultural, religious, educational, political, industrial and commercial life of the Armenians of Aintab* (CA, Los Angeles: Union of the Armenians of Aintab, 1957), 11; Kemal Karpat, *Ottoman Population (1830–1914): Demographic and Social Character* (Madison Wisconsin: University of Madison Press, 1985), 176; *Arsiv Belgeleriyle Ermeni Faaliyetleri 1914–1918* ̧ , Vol. 1 (Ankara: Genelkurmay Basımevi, 2005), 655.

5 Salim Tamari, *Year of the Locust: A Soldier's Diary and the Erasure of Palestine's Ottoman Past* (CA: University of California Press, 2011), 86.

6 Ibid., 25.

The "objectivity" of personal narratives, such as survival accounts, as verifable historical document in comparison to archival documents is a topic of debate. As such, materials such as memoirs, autobiographies and diaries should be approached with caution, with it being necessary to test their reliability and validity. Yet, these types of texts should be examined not in terms of how coherently they are analyzed by the different actors who are witnesses of the concerned era, but rather *how* they narrate the events. It is impossible to objectify historical thinking. Historical thinking is simultaneously dynamic, fuid and porous. In the case of Holocaust literature, for instance, Polish historian Marta Cobel-Tokarska argues that personal documents constitute "a more valuable source of knowledge about the opinions, feelings and psychological state of individuals, their perception of reality and the place these individuals see for themselves in this reality, than information about the actual course of historical events, especially those in which the author of a testimony did not participate."7 Many scholars rely on frst-person accounts in the absence of additional sources. Bogharian's diary, as a survivor account, helps us to recognize the advantage of individual, unique perspectives on the Armenian Genocide inherent in such a primary source.

The diary was published in Beirut, in 1973, as a chapter in a general work entitled "The genocidal Turk: Eyewitness accounts culled from the accounts of people who were miraculously saved." This chapter is eightyone pages long (the pages measure 5.5 by 9.4 inches [14 by 21.3 centimeters]).8

### Deportations in Aintab

The deportation of Aintab's Armenians began in August 1915,9 late compared to the deportations in most eastern regions. Previously, Aintab Armenians had relied upon the honesty and kindness of Celal Bey, Şükrü

7Marta Cobel-Tokarska, *Bezludna wyspa nora grob. Wojenne kryjowki Zydow w okupowanej Polsce* (Desert Island, Burrow, Grave. War-time Hiding Places of Jews in Occupied Poland) (Warsaw: IPN, 2012), 35 cited in Natalia Aleksiun, "Survivor Testimonies and Historical Objectivity: Polish Historiography since Neighbors," *Holocaust Studies: A Journal of Culture and History* 20 (1–2): 2014, 161.

8Tachjian, *Daily Life in the Abyss*, 7.

9Bibliothèque arménienne Nubar, Paris (hereafter BNu) /Fonds A. Andonian, P.J. 1/3, fle 4, Aintab, "The Deportation of Armenians in Aintab," 1.

Bey, and Hilmi Bey to shield them from deportation.10 The period of wishful thinking ended when Cemal Bey, general secretary of Aleppo's CUP branch, arrived in late June, accompanied by a few propagandists. The mission of this Unionist cadre was to convince Aintab's notables to repeat their entreaties to Istanbul to issue a deportation order. Cemal Bey succeeded in pressuring the local CUP and other Muslim leaders to send new slander letters to the capital. On June 21, 1915, the German consul at Aleppo, Walter Rössler, reported that Governor Celal Bey was to be removed from his post because of his refusal to deport Armenians.11 Indeed on June 30, in a reshuffing of provincial governorships, Bekir Sami Bey was given the Aleppo seat, while Celal Bey was moved to Konya.12 On July 5, Celal left Aleppo. Aram Andonian mourned, noting in his Aintab fle: "Aintab Turks collaborating with Unionists in Aleppo [have] succeeded in removing the honest, charitable, and reasonable governor of Aleppo from his post."13

Still, as late as July 17, Aintab's own district governor, Şükrü Bey, was able to inform the Ministry of Interior that no Armenian had been deported [*harice çıkarılmadı*] from Aintab.14 Dissatisfed with that state of affairs, Talat replaced Şükrü with Ahmed Faik (Erner) on July 26, 1915.15 Around the same time, Hilmi Bey, Aintab's military commander**,** also resigned.16 On July 29, the local CUP at last received an "affrmative"

11AA-PA, Konsulat Aleppo, Paket 1, Vol. 1, J. No 1311, Rössler to Embassy, Aleppo, 21 June 1915, telegram 9 cited in Hilmar Kaiser, "Regional resistance to central government policies: Ahmed Djemal Pasha, the governors of Aleppo, and Armenian deportees in the spring and summer of 1915," *Journal of Genocide Research*, 12 (3–4): 2010, 193; Rössler to Embassy, Aleppo, 21 June 1915 J. No. 3790 AA-PA Konstantinopel 169 telegram 9; Rössler to Embassy, Aleppo, 21 June 1915 J. No. 3799 AA-PA Konstantinopel 169 telegram 10 in Kaiser—in collaboration with Luther and Nancy Eskijian, *At the Crossroads of Der Zor: Death, Survival, and Humanitarian Resistance in Aleppo, 1915–1917* (Princeton, NJ: Gomidas Institute Books, Taderon Press, 2001), 15.

12Kaiser, "Regional resistance to central government policies," 193.

13BNu/Fonds A. Andonian, P.J. 1/3, fle 4, Aintab, 8.

14BOA.DH.ŞFR 480/53, 17 July 1915.

15BOA.DH.ŞFR 54A/113, 26 July 1915. Şükrü Bey was appointed to district governorship of Çankırı on 27 July 1915. BOA.İ .DH 1515/1333, 27 July 1915. His offcial appointment decree was promulgated in *Takvim-i Vekayi* on 21 August 1915. *Takvim-i Vekayi*, No. 2266, 1.

16Aguni and Andonian believed that the district governor Şükrü Bey and military commander Hilmi Bey resigned so as not to have to carry out the deportation order as a fnal blow to Aintab Armenians. Sebuh Aguni, *Milion my Hah'ero'w Ch'arti Badmo'wt'iwny* (History of the Massacre of One Million Armenians) (Istanbul: H. Asaduryan Vortik, 1920), 310; BNu/Fonds A. Andonian, P.J. 1/3, fle 4, Aintab, 4.

10BNu/Fonds A. Andonian, P.J. 1/3, fle 4, Aintab, 7.

reply to its entreaties from the central government, and Aintab was added to the deportation list.17 By the time Ahmed Faik Bey reached Aintab on August 26, the deportation had already begun.

Once they received the anticipated news from Istanbul, local Young Turks called an emergency meeting and prepared the list of Armenians to be deported.18 The very next day Rössler notifed his superiors that the order to deport Armenians from Aintab and Kilis "had just been issued."19 The American representative passed the news along to his ambassador a few days later, adding that the order also applied to Antakya, Alexandretta, and Kesab.20 In Besgöz, located between Aintab and Kilis, the people of ̧ the village were discussing the fact that the Aintab deportation was to commence the next day. After a while, a well-dressed gentleman, by his appearance a Circassian, wearing a combination of civilian and offcer's clothing, joined them and inquired from which part of the town people would leave, which road they would take, what kind of people were to be deported and what one could possibly pilfer from them.21 "When one of those present asked him if he was a civilian or a member of the military," he grinned slyly and questioned rhetorically, "Is there a more opportune moment to be a soldier than the present one?"22 On July 30, ffty Armenian

17BNu/Fonds A. Andonian, P.J. 1/3, fle 4, Aintab, 7.

19Telegram from the German consul in Aleppo, Walter Rössler, to the embassy in Istanbul, 30 July 1915 in *Archives du génocide des Arméniens*, doc. 125, ed. Johannes Lepsius, 119–20, cited in Kévorkian, *The Armenian Genocide*, 606–7.

20Letter from the Consul Jackson to Morgenthau, 3 August 1915 in Ara Sarafan (ed.), *United States Offcial Records on the Armenian Genocide*, *1915-1917* (London: Gomidas Institute, 2004), 169.

21 1915-09-03-DE-002 cited in Wolfang Gust (ed.), *The Armenian Genocide: Evidence from the German Foreign Offce Archives, 1915–1916* (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2014), 351.

22 Ibid., 351.

18 Ibid., 7.

families were ordered to leave Aintab within the next twenty-four hours.23 Their deportation began on August 1, 1915.24

On August 1, the frst convoy comprising these families (approximately 400 Armenians)25 departed with light belongings, locking their doors and leaving behind nearly all their assets.26 On August 7, a second convoy of ffty more Armenian families was deported.27 On the same day, gangs, formed by peasants from the villages of Tılbasar, Mezra, Kinisli, Kantara, ̧ Ekiz Kapı, Bahne Hameyli, and Sazgın, attacked the deportees. These *chetes* were led by Emin Efendi, the manager of *Ziraat Bankası* (Agricultural Bank).28 The second convoy was systematically pillaged by gangs less than a day's march from Aintab.29 Meanwhile, a third convoy that departed on August 8 was composed of one hundred families from the Kayacık and

23Kevork A. Sarafan (ed.), *Badmo'wt'iwn Ah'nt'abi Hah'o'c*, vol. I (LA: Union of the Armenians of Aintab, 1953), 1022; Nerses Tavukjian*, Dar'abanqi Orakro'wt'iwn* (Diary of Miserable Days), ed. Toros Toramanian (Beirut: High Type Compugraph-Technopresses, 1991), 70; Vahe N. Gulesserian (ed.), *H'o'wshamadean Awedis Kalemqereani* (Memoir of Avedis Kalemkerian) (Beirut: Dıbaran Der Sahagian, 1965), 56; Kevork Barsumian, *Badmo'wt'iwn Ah'nt'abi H. H. Tashnagco'wt'iwn 1898–1922* (History of the Aintab Armenian Revolutionary Federation 1898–1922) (Aleppo: Tigris, 1957), 49; Sarkis Balabanian, *Geanqis Daq o'w Bagh Orery*: *Ah'nt'ab, Qe'sab, Hale'b* (Hot and Cold Days of My Life: Aintab, Kesap, Aleppo) (Aleppo: Shirag, 1983), 58.

24Different dates are given in memoirs regarding the exact beginning of deportations of Aintab Armenians, see. BNu/Fonds A. Andonian, P.J. 1/3, fle 4, Aintab, 7; Bogharian, *Orakro'wt'iwn Darakir Geanqis*, 122; 126–29; Elie H. Nazarian, *Badmakirq Nazarean Kertasdani (1475–1988)* (History of Nazarian Family) (Beirut: Zartonk Press, 1988), 184; Kersam Aharonian, *H'o'wshamadean Medz Egher'ni* (Memory of Great Crime) (Beirut: Atlas, 1965), 46; M. Arzumian, *Ha'hasdan, 1914–1917* (Armenia, 1914–1917) (Yerevan: Hayasdan 1969), 438.

25Tavukjian*, Dar'abanqi Orakro'wt'iwn*, 71. As opposed to Tavukjian's accounts, Gulesserian gave the number of thirteen affuent and well-known families and other people from the Orthodox community who formed the frst convoy of deportees; see *Badmo'wt'iwn Ah'nt'abi Hah'o'c*, vol. I, 1023. Additionally, according to Miss Frearson's accounts, the frst convoy of Aintab Armenians were sent away on 30 or 31 July 1915. "Miss Frearson's Experiences and Observations in Turkey," *ABCFM* <IP_ADDRESS>, 1817–1919, Harvard University Microflm Reel 670-7.1.14, Unit 5, Vol. 2, Part 1, 4.

26*Badmo'wt'iwn Ah'nt'abi Hah'o'c*, vol. I, 1023.

27 Ibid., 1023; Tavukjian*, Dar'abanqi Orakro'wt'iwn*, 72.

28BNu/Fonds A. Andonian, P.J. 1/3, fle 4, Aintab, 8.

29 Ibid., 8; Tavukjian*, Dar'abanqi Orakro'wt'iwn*, 72; Balabanian, *Geanqis Daq o'w Bagh Orery*, 57; NA/RG59/867.4016/148, Letter from the Consul Jackson to Morgenthau, 19 August 1915 in *United States Offcial Records*, 207. Another report to Morgenthau on 3 August 1915, Jackson notes "Now all Armenians have been ordered deported from the cities of Aintab, Mardin, Kilis, Antioch, Alexandretta, Kesab, and all the smaller towns in Aleppo province, estimated at 60,000 persons." NA/RG59/867.4016/126, Letter from the Consul Jackson to Morgenthau, 3 August 1915 in *United States Offcial Records,* 169.

Akyol neighborhoods.30 Similar to the deportees from previous convoys, these people headed out with carts, camels, and other draught animals early in the morning. After spending the night at Sazgın village, they were led to Akçakoyunlu railroad station.31 The fourth convoy left Aintab on August 11 and consisted of 120 families, many of them well-off, from the Kayacık, Ibn-i Eyüp, and Kastelbas ̇ ı̧ neighborhoods.32 On August 13,33 the ffth convoy of over 120 families (approximately 1200 people) departed from Eblahan and Akyol.34

On August 23, the sixth convoy reached Akçakoyunlu with around 120 Armenian families from Kayacık, the neighborhood of *Surp Asdvadzadzin* (St. Mary, Armenian Orthodox) Church, Eblahan, Ibn-i Eyüp, and ̇ Kastelbası̧. Unlike other convoys, those from Aintab included men, women, and children over the age of ten.35 From Akçakoyunlu, the frst two groups were sent to Damascus. The rest were held in a transit camp surrounded by barbed wire while waiting to be loaded into stock cars for transport to Aleppo. These deportees were later sent on foot to the region of Deir ez-Zor.36 While the exact number of deportees, the death toll, and the number of survivors are unknown, it is estimated that the number of deported Armenians from Aintab was approximately 32,000, with 20,000 perishing in the genocide and 12,000 surviving.37 Those deported via the

30*Badmo'wt'iwn Ah'nt'abi Hah'o'c* vol. I, 1025; Tavukjian*, Dar'abanqi Orakro'wt'iwn*, 72. Kayacık and Akyol were two neighborhoods where the majority of the Armenian population resided. Even today, its original features have been preserved, including its architectural features such as Armenian schools and churches, which are now used for other purposes or have become private property.

31 Ibid.

32These were neighborhoods where most of the Aintab Armenians resided.

33*Badmo'wt'iwn Ah'nt'abi Hah'o'c* vol. I, 1025; Tavukjian*, Dar'abanqi Orakro'wt'iwn*, 72.

34As in Eblahan, Armenians and Muslims resided together in Akyol. However, the Armenian population was higher in number within this neighborhood.

35NA/RG59/867.4016/148, Letter from the Consul Jackson to Morgenthau, 19 August 1915 in *United States Offcial Records,* 207.

36*Badmo'wt'iwn Ah'nt'abi Hah'o'c* vol. I, 1026; BNu/Fonds A. Andonian, P.J. 1/3, fle 4, Aintab, 9.

37BNu/Fonds A. Andonian, P.J. 1/3, fle 4, Aintab, 20. According to missionary reports, there were about 20,000 Armenians in Aintab "who were exiled, and about 10,000 were drafted, so that the population of the city is about 30,000 less than it used to be; but in place of them we have about 12,000 refugees, women and children, who are entirely dependent on relief." *ABCFM* <IP_ADDRESS>, 1817–1919, Harvard University Microflm Reel 670-7.1.11, Unit 5, Vol. 2, Part 1, No 274.

Homs-Hama-Damascus route were more likely to survive, as the majority were allowed to convert to Islam.38

### Krikor Bogharian in Exile and His Diary: Conditions of Deportees

Krikor Bogharian, at age 18, was on the fourth convoy deported on August 11, 1915. Along with his family and siblings, he was sent to Aleppo, and then to Hama and then to Salamiyya. A diligent and intelligent young man, Bogharian was born to Priest Karekin Bogharian, a prominent cleric, in Aintab in 1897. He completed his secondary educational studies at the Vartanian School in 1912.39 According to archival records located at Beirut's Haigazian University Library, Bogharian was a successful student at the Vartanian School, which taught courses in Armenian, Ottoman, French, and English.40 After graduating from the Vartanian School, he went on to study at Cilicia College, which was founded in Aintab that same year.41 However, his studies were cut short during his fnal year when he and his family were targeted for deportation. Bogharian was able to endure the treacherous environment faced by the families exiled to Hama and Salamiyya thanks in part to the texts he brought from the collection that his father—a notable bookseller and the local offcial representing the Armenian daily newspaper *Püzantion* (Byzantium), published out of Istanbul,—had acquired over the years.42 It was this setting in which he was raised that contributed to his inclination to books, his decision to maintain a journal of his experiences, and that

38Bogharian, *Orakrutyun Darakiri Gyankis,* 139, 186, 189, 191, 192; Tavukjian*, Darabanki Orakrutyun*, 141, 148, 178.

39Offering high school education, this institution was established in 1882 thanks to the contributions of wealthy and intellectual families of Kalusd Agha Gazarian, Nigoghos Agha Nazaretian and V. M. Kurkjian from the Armenian community. For more comprehensive information, see Sarafan, *A Briefer History of Aintab*, 92–97. Also see Tachjian, *Daily Life in the Abyss*, 18.

40*Library Archives of Haigazian University*, "'Krikor Bogharian's Archives', 'Vartanian grtaran. Vgayagan (Vartanian School Certifcate), 21 June 1912, Aintab.'"

41Established by the administrators of Vartanian School, this institution offered excellent education opportunities in the modern sense. There were departments training teachers and religious men at Cilicia College. For more detailed information, see Sarafan, *A Briefer History of Aintab*, 105–12.

42 Sarafan (ed.), *Badmo'wt'iwn Ah'nt'abi Hah'o'c* vol. II (History of Aintab Armenians) (LA: Union of Aintab Armenians, 1953), 472–74.

prompted his father to bring along a chest flled with books when leaving Aintab.43

According to some survivor accounts, Armenians were told that they could leave everything, lock their doors, and either hold onto their keys or leave them with a neighbor or the *mukhtar* (village head).44 They were also assured that the government would carefully seal their properties and protect them.45 As one of the frst deportees to leave Aintab, neither Bogharian nor his family members realized the murderous crimes committed against the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire. They were promised that this was a temporary arrangement and that they would return to their homes in a few months.46 However, as months rolled by in their new land with the realization that there was no returning home, the Bogharians came to understand the stark realities of exile, altering this initial belief.

Apart from Krikor himself, the Bogharian family included his father, Karekin Bogharian (forty-eight years old); his mother, Santukh (thirtyeight); his sister, Hripsime (nine); and his brothers, Khatchig (sixteen), Norayr (eleven), and Nubar (four or fve).47 Krikor Bogharian states that their journey to Akçakoyunlu was uneventful and the people responsible for their protection were serious about their safety. Having spent the night of August 11 in tents pitched outside on an open feld close to the Sazgın village, the convoy arrived in the railroad station after a one-day journey. When they reached this destination, they came upon other deportees, for instance from Fındıcak, a town in Marash, waiting for trains in hundreds of tents.

43Tachjian, *Daily Life in the Abyss*, 18–19.

44Bogharian, *Orakro'wt'iwn Darakir Geanqis,* 122; *H'o'wshamadean Awedis Kalemqereani*, 56.

45 "Miss Frearson's Experiences and Observations in Turkey." *ABCFM*, <IP_ADDRESS>, 1817–1919, Harvard University Microflm Reel 670-7.1.11, Unit 5, Vol. 2, Part 1, 8. Alice Kazazian, a genocide survivor from Aintab who was able to reach Aleppo through bribing Kurdish escorts, was interviewed by Richard Hovannisian in 1986 in Philadelphia about her experience during the genocide. As to the seizure, plunder, and confscation of Armenians' immovable and movable properties, Alice Kazazian stated that "a few days before our deportation, the local government told us to lock your houses' doors; either take your keys with you or hand them over to the government." An interview conducted with Alice Kazazian, 1986, Philadelphia. I am grateful to late Pakrad Kazazian, a son of Alice Kazazian, for sharing the transcription of his mother's interview with me.

46Bogharian, *Orakro'wt'iwn Darakir Geanqis,* 126–29. 47 Ibid., 127.

Members of Bogharian's convoy also set up their tents and started to wait for the train, which would take them to Aleppo then to Hama. Lieutenant Yasin (Kutluğ) Efendi was in charge of controlling and managing deportations there. In his diary, Bogharian depicts Yasin as a man who seemed kind but sometimes treated deportees cruelly and punished them with the whip he carried.48 After the war, he escaped to Ankara, joined the Kemalist-nationalist forces (*Kuvayi Milliye*) and became a deputy for Aintab in the frst parliament founded in 1920.49 Bogharian shares an anecdote about Yasin Efendi, who visited their tent while inspecting the surrounding area. He ordered the chest flled with books to be opened and asked Bogharian's father what these books were. Karekin convinced him that they were on baptism and funeral ceremonies. Yasin allowed him to keep his books and in return Karekin gave him a handmade embroidery as a gift.50

The Bogharians reached Hama along with other deportees on August 16, 1915, where they were greeted by Armenians from Aintab, Kilis, Marash, Kığı, Fındıcak and Van. He explains that as there was no convenient place for one to relieve oneself, a disgusting smell had permeated everywhere. For those who had money, there were shops. This is how Bogharian portrays the place they were staying in Hama:

We were living under the scorching sun, in a flthy place. Naturally, we had many diffculties but still we were close to the city and thank God we were able to purchase the things we needed easily and freely. Two loaves of bread were sold for one *metelik* [according to Ottoman currency, 1 metelik equals to 0.25 piaster].51

Accompanying the last convoy of Aintab Armenians on August 19 were Armenians from Antioch and Kesab. Bogharian underlines that his family was able to get some cash by selling some of the items they brought with them. He recounts that they sold "three carpets for 31 *mecidiyes*

48 Ibid., 127.

49Yasin Kutluğ was a member of the Turkish nationalist forces in Halfeti, a town of Urfa, in April 1920 and played an active role in the war between Aintab nationalist forces and French military units in 1920–1921; see Yasin Kutluğ, "I ̇ stiklal Savası̧'ndan Hatıralar," *Gaziantep Halkevi Mecmuası* 25 (1940): 12; *Basp*̧ *ınar Aylık Edebiyat ve Kültür Mecmuası* 31 (1941): 7, 8, 13.

50Bogharian, *Orakro'wt'iwn Darakir Geanqis*, 128. 51 Ibid., 129.

[according to Ottoman currency, one mecidiye equals to twenty piasters], a large pot for three mecidiyes, a blanket for 1.15 mecidiyes and a silk bundle for one mecidiye."52 On August 26, another group of Aintab Armenians reached the refugee station in Hama and was also sent south. Toward the evening, Armenians from Fındıcak and Marash were deported to Homs with camels. The next evening, there were deportees from Aintab on the two trains passing through the station in Hama. They were in a miserable state. The evening after, some of them from Kilis and Marash were again sent to Homs. On September 14, ffteen more families from Aintab arrived in Hama. Around 400 families from Aintab, Kilis and Marash were settled at the center of Hama. On September 15, Armenians from Konya, Siverek, Sivas and other places arrived. Most had been robbed and were sick.

On October 14, Bogharian jots another important note in his diary and specifes the origins of the deportees who had been in Hama since they arrived: Aintab, Marash, Antioch, Kesab-Suediye, Kilis, Kayseri, Samsun, Sivas and its villages; Amasya and its villages; Komerza (Tomarza in Kayseri), Gürün, Kığı, İ skenderun, Dörtyol, Konya, Hacin, Diyarbakır, Ehnes, Siverek, Harput, Bak ̧ ır-Maden, Viransehir, Vezirköprü, Agn, ̧ Cihan, Beylan, and more.53

In his diary, Bogharian recounts that seventy-nine families, including his own, began preparations to depart for Salamiyya on October 20. Among these families were also Bogharian's grandfather, uncle, eldest brother-in-law and many neighboring families from Aintab. On October 21, they arrived in Salamiyya and spent that night at Barsumian's and Gouzougian's place.54 After coming to Salamiyya, the frst thing they did was to fnd jobs. All houses for rent were built out of mud-bricks. Monthly rent rates increased to almost sixty piasters. Bogharian and his family rented a house close to the market and the main road for thirty-three piasters a month. In the meantime, new deportees from Aintab were being placed in Salamiyya.

54Barsumian and Gouzougian were among the most prominent and wealthy families in Aintab. They were deported with the frst convoy from the city on August 1, 1915.

52 Ibid., 130.

53 Ibid., 140.

### Starvation, Epidemics and Sexual Abuse

As Melanie S. Tanielian states, hunger, starvation, malnutrition and its associated diseases were "far more deadly than the bullets and shells of the enemy" during the WWI.55 Greater Syria was afficted with famine, and the provision of food to civilians gave way to battles over political power.56 By the early spring of 1915, "grain and four shortages had become a serious issue in the Greater Syrian provinces of the Ottoman Empire, and culminated into a full-fedged famine that would claim the lives of approximately one-third of population by the time Allied troops began occupying the region in October 1918."57 Similarly, the famine that devastated the population in Salamiyya transformed the city into a sprawling expanse of open graves due to the surging number of deaths from starvation. While the hardships the Armenian population in Salamiyya withstood were certainly a consequence of the 1915–1916 famine that struck Syria and Lebanon, the decisions that the CUP, helmed by Cemal Pasha, implemented in Beirut and throughout the Syrian provinces exacerbated the harsh conditions for Armenians who had been deported to the region.58 Bogharian recorded this situation in his personal journal, noting that in Salamiyya by late October 1915, eighty deaths from disease and starvation were being reported each day, and residents had begun to face daily struggles in obtaining basic food and materials.59 The gravity of the situation had worsened by November 20, and Bogharian wrote that residents were making bread from whatever grain was available. A growing number of individuals were in dire need of assistance, including his father, Nerses Tavukjian, and many others. In total, Bogharian recorded 3050 residents requiring aid: 573 men and 1273 women who had fallen ill, 264 men and 706 women whose spouses or parents had perished, and 55 men and 179 women who required some other form of assistance.60

55Melanie Tanielian, "Food and Nutrition (Ottoman Empire/Middle East)," 2 in *1914–1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War*, ed. by Ute Daniel et al., Freie Universität Berlin, 8 October 2014.

56Tanelian, "Feeding the City: The Beirut Municipality and the Politics of Food During World War I," *International Journal of Middle East Studies*, 46 (4): 2014, 739.

57Tanielian, "Politics of wartime relief in Ottoman Beirut (1914–1918)," *First World War Studies*, 5 (1): 2014, 70.

58Graham A. Pitts, "A Hungry Population Stops Thinking About Resistance: Class, Famine, and Lebanon's World War I Legacy," *JOTSA* 7, no. 2 (2020): 217–36.

59Bogharian, *Orakro'wt'iwn Darakir Geanqis*, 138.

60 Ibid., 147.

Bogharian himself visited a state physician on several occasions as he had developed typhus, suggesting that government-appointed medical practitioners were working in the city. In a journal entry dated January 12, 1916, he wrote that a group of Protestant Armenians had been deported from Aintab to Deir ez-Zor amid brutal winter weather,61 while death and disease continued to proliferate in Aleppo and Hama. A group of Armenians deported from Bursa were forced to remain near Azez in Syria, where they were left without housing or assistance in the frigid winter, receiving no assistance from the local Turkish population. The corpses of Armenians who had died of starvation or hypothermia were strewn about the area.

The lack of adequate food precipitated a seemingly insurmountable threat by February, around the time that Ali Kemal Bey, the newly appointed district governor of Salamiyya, had arrived in the region. Bogharian depicts him as an offcial bearing negative opinion about the Armenian population.

Arab *emirs* and princes attempted to provide some assistance and protection. The brothers Emir Tamir and Emir Marza were two such Arab fgures.62 As the impacts of the famine and lack of adequate resources began to deepen in March 1916, malaria, spotted typhus, cholera, and a slew of other deadly and contagious ailments emerged in Bilad al-Sham and Salamiyya and were among the most persistent threats to the Armenian families living in exile there. March 13 marked the passage of seven months since the Aintab Armenians had been deported to Salamiyya, and the group discovered on April 6 that one-third of the Armenians, totaling approximately 100 individuals, had died while being forcibly deported to Deir ez-Zor from various causes, including hypothermia, consuming poisonous plants, and starvation.63 September of that year once again saw a considerable increase in the death rate and disease as the famine persisted.

61 Ibid., 152. As of 24 August 1915, the population of Protestant Armenians in Aintab was approximately 5,100; see BOA.DH.ŞFR 485/48 and BOA.DH.EUM. II. Şube 73/18, 11, Aleppo Governor Bekir Sami Bey to Ministry of Interior, 24 August 1915. On 19 December 1915, the frst convoy of Protestant Armenians was sent via Akçakoyunlu to Deir ez-Zor. *Badmo'wt'iwn Ah'nt'abi Hah'o'c* vol. I, 1035; Balabanian, *Geanqis Daq o'w Bagh Orery*, 73. It was followed by the second, third, and fourth convoys until 23 December. *Hay Aintab* 7 (1966): 35. Of 600 Protestant families in Aintab, 200 were deported, the majority of whom were annihilated in Deir ez-Zor. *Badmo'wt'iwn Ah'nt'abi Hah'o'c* vol. I, 548, 552. Sarafan stated that out of 5500 Protestants in Aintab, 2450 survived.

63 Ibid., 165.

62 Ibid., 157.

Mass burial ceremonies and brief prayer offerings were all that were afforded to the growing number of deceased Armenians.

In addition to the rampant starvation, illness, physical attacks, and weariness that they suffered, Armenian women and girls faced sexual assault and degradation for prolonged periods of time. The growing number of Armenian widows prompted a corresponding increase in the prevalence of female-headed households, and many women were forced to engage in prostitution—today referred to as "survival sex."64 The trajectory these women followed into prostitution was either through direct exploitation or a lack of viable alternatives, and this phenomenon was most widespread among Armenian women who had survived the initial deportation. In fact, in his entries dated May 27, 1916, Bogharian outlines the spiritual breakdown that Armenian women confronted. Those residing around Hama, Homs and Salamiyya were forced to work as servants, mistresses and prostitutes.65 Bogharian defnes these conditions as "one of the heaviest blows Turks inficted on us."66

### Forced Conversion

Forced conversion was one answer that the persecuted, including the Bogharian family, considered. The conspiracy to eradicate the Armenian population and all traces of it from Ottoman society that the Young Turks had envisaged during World War I comprised deportation, genocide, and forced assimilation. The mass murders almost entirely targeted Armenian men, whereas Armenian women and children predominantly faced deportations and forced assimilation through relocation with Muslim families.67

64Matthias Bjørnlund, "'A Fate Worse than Dying': Sexual Violence during the Armenian Genocide," in Dagmar Herzog (ed.), *Brutality and Desire: War and Sexuality in Europe's Twentieth Century* (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 16–59, 24; Tachjian, "Gender, nationalism, exclusion: the reintegration process of female survivors of the Armenian genocide," *Nation and Nationalism*, 15 (1): 2009, 71. For the most recent research on this topic, see Anna Aleksanyan, "Gendered Aspects of the Armenian Genocide in the Experiences of Its Victimized Females (1914-1918)", Unpublished PhD diss., Clark University, 2023.

65Bogharian, *Orakro'wt'iwn Darakir Geanqis*, 173. See too Yervant Odian, *Accursed Years: My Exile and Return from Der Zor, 1914–1919* (London: Gomidas Institute, 2009), 300–1.

66 Ibid., 173.

67Eliz Sanasarian, "Gender Distinction in the Genocidal Process: A Preliminary Study of the Armenian Case," *Holocaust and Genocide Studies*, IV: 1989, 449–61; Uğur Ümit Üngör, "Orphans, Converts, and Prostitutes: Social Consequences of War and Persecution in the Ottoman Empire, 1914–1923," *War in History*, 19 (2): 2012, 189.

The genocidal process initially sought to decimate the social fabric of Armenian society and subsequently implemented a campaign of deportations that physically devastated the Armenians and, consequently, became a way to identify potential Armenian individuals suitable for resettlement in Muslim households. The forced assimilation of the surviving Armenians into the Muslim population comprised the forcible conversion of these Armenians, most of whom were women and children, to Islam. Ironically, the Muslim families who accepted Armenians into their homes as part of this forced conversion policy largely coordinated with the Ottoman state to assist in its efforts to eliminate the Armenian population.

Conversion has been viewed as a practice that "varied from one region to another at the discretion of local administrators and that was primarily motivated by Muslim fanaticism."68 Most deportees considered it a breach of moral and social codes, as well as an infraction of their religious identity; nonetheless, to convert and live inconspicuously in Muslim communities remained their most viable option for survival. Demands for the conversion of Armenians, who had come to realize that deportation equaled death, began in June 1915.69 On July 1, 1915, it was prohibited, though reinstated four months later, albeit with certain restrictions. "It is understood that some of the Armenians being expelled pledged to convert *en masse* or individually, and in this fashion worked to secure the way for them to remain in their native lands," observed Talat Pasha in a cable to provincial administrators.70 The reinstatement was announced on November 4, 1915, through a "secret" order sent to all provinces and provincial districts as well as settlement areas in present-day Syria and Iraq. On November 5, 1915, the government issued a regulation establishing the rules for conversion. Accordingly, the only requests to be accepted were those presented by Armenians who had been permitted to stay after having been subjected to a stringent security vetting.71

68Akçam, *The Young Turks' Crime Against Humanity*, 289.

69BOA.DH.ŞFR 54/100, 22 June 1915.

70BOA.DH.ŞFR 54/254, Coded telegram from the Ministry of Interior's General Security Directorate to the Provinces and Provincial Districts of Erzurum, Adana, Bitlis, Aleppo, Diyarbakır, Trebizond, Mamuretülaziz, Musul, Van, Urfa, Kütahya, Maras, I̧ ̇ çel and Eskisehir, dated 1 July 1915. ̧

71BOA.DH.ŞFR 54/281, 5 November 1915.

Conversion was not a stable process; it was initiated, ceased, and restarted. Thus, there was no all-encompassing, defnitive regulation or piece of legislation. Execution and implementation of the policy by the Ministry of Interior and relevant Ottoman bureaucracy was inconsistent. The policies of religious conversion underwent a signifcant alteration in the spring of 1916. Armenians who remained in various provinces and districts of Anatolia and those who had been allowed to settle in Syria were forced to choose between Islam and deportation to Deir ez-Zor.72 "At the end of February and the beginning of March 1916, nearly all of the Armenians in the labor battalion of Aleppo, urged upon partly with success, were converted to Islam," wrote Consul Rössler.73 A similar report came from Aleppo:

According to mutually corroborating news from Hama, Homs, Damascus, and other places, in the last weeks, those sent away *en masse* [the Armenians] were pressed to convert to Islam through the threat of further deportations. This [conversion process] took place in a purely bureaucratic fashion: Applying, and then changing of name.74

American consul Jackson of Aleppo attested that "at Hama, Homs, Marash, etc., thousands have been forced to become Mohammedans."75 The Ottoman government's assimilationist policy continued to be implemented in the summer of 1916, a year after the main deportations had started. The case of Krikor Bogharian is a prime example. His case shows the continued genocidal policy of the Ottoman government a year after its emergence. His diary illustrates in detail the organized nature of the assimilations, with Ottoman bureaucracy, police, judiciary, and clergy being both directly involved and indirectly complicit in the approval of forced marriage, conversion, and adoption, in keeping offcial records of these acts, and in compiling lists of those who were to be deported, adopted, or converted.76

72Akçam, *The Young Turks' Crime Against Humanity*, 304.

73 Ibid., 305.

74The report of Aleppo consul Hoffmann to the German Embassy, dated 29 July 1916.

75 See the letter from Mrs. Jesse Jackson, wife of Aleppo consul J.B. Jackson, to the State Department, dated 13 October 1916, in *United States Offcial Records*, 119.

76Bogharian, *Orakro'wt'iwn Darakir Geanqis*; 179–80, 188; Ara Sarafan, "The Absorption of Armenian Women and Children Into Muslim Households as a Structural Component of the Armenian Genocide," in Omer Bartov and Mack Phylis (eds.), *Genocide and Religion in the Twentieth Century* (Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2001), 212–14; Donald E. Miller & Lorna T. Miller, "Children of the Armenian Genocide," in Richard Hovannisian (ed.), *Armenian Genocide: History, Politics, Ethics* (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992), 100–1;

According to his diary, on June 23, a proposal was made to convert Armenians from Adana who settled in Hama.77 He writes that following the physical, economic and cultural destruction of Armenians, this was "a new evil" forced upon them. Actually, forced conversion was already occurring in Aintab in May 1916.78 As of late July 1916, religious converts in Salamiyya began to increase in number, as Ali Kemal Bey insisted that Armenian deportees change their religion to Islam. In Hama in August 1916, Armenian deportees were pressured to convert *en masse*, to which they acceded. In Hama and Salamiyya in September 1916, there were reports of forcible conversions, targeting many prominent individuals from Aintab and a number of alumni of Central Turkey College.79

Reports of local attempts to force the remaining Christians to "choose" Islamization, led to a brief but critical reaction from the Armenians. The alternative was deportation, the meaning of which was widely understood by this point. Bogharian's entries detailed that conversions occurred in two ways. In the frst option, the head of a household appealed to the *kadı* to offcially convert and he then announced in the town center that he had embraced Islam, at which point he received a Muslim name.80 Following the conversion of the other family members, they too were publicly given new names. Alternatively, the head of a household applied to the conversion offce along with the names of his family members, they would receive new Muslim names and were reregistered as such in the register's offce with a note stating that they had converted to Islam.81

Krikor Bogharian and his family chose the second option. Without taking his mother, sister, or brothers to the register's offce, he completed the process himself. After becoming a Muslim, he changed his name to Şahap

81 Ibid., 188.

77Bogharian, *Orakro'wt'iwn Darakir Geanqis*, 176.

78Aguni, *Milion my Hah'ero'w Ch'arti Badmo'wt'iwny*, 311.

79*ABCFM* <IP_ADDRESS>, 1817–1919, Harvard University Microflm Reel 670-7.1.11, Vol. 2, Part 1, No. 247. Central Turkey College was founded in 1876 with professors who were among the most prominent educators in Turkey, with students (75 to 100) marked by their interest in public affairs, with more than 300 alumni. Central Turkey College was the most important American-Protestant institution in Aintab. It was formally established in October 1876 by Rev. Dr. Tilman C. Trowbridge, who served as the frst president of the College until 1888. Sarafan, *Badmo'wt'iwn Ah'nt'abi Hah'o'c* vol. I, 554–55.

80Bogharian, *Orakro'wt'iwn Darakir Geanqis*, 188.

(his mother changed her name to Meryem) and had this name added to his registry, at which time it was noted at the register offce that he and his family had converted.82 By August 1916, conversions in Salamiyya began to increase. Bogharian participated in this process—both by converting to Islam and by assuming an offcial duty. In his entry dated August 16, he remarks that he had begun working as a clerk in the "conversion bureau," which maintained records of conversions to Islam. He writes in his diary that people who accepted conversion, including himself, did so in order to survive. He recorded that 250 families comprised of 1250 people converted to Islam in Hama on August 24, under watch of a special offcial sent from Hama to monitor the proceedings.83 Among the registered families were Aintab Armenians such as the families Sulahian, Babikian, Levonian, and Yegavian. On August 28, the total number of families who had converted to Islam increased to 500.84

Bogharian writes that the local people thought these conversions were only for show, a means of placating the authorities. The number of people who came from nearby villages to convert also increased, as people were living in fear and did not want to be deprived of their food rations, which were guaranteed to those who converted. On August 29, the number of Armenian families who became Muslim reached 750. Among these were Protestant families such as the Jebejians and Barsumians.

Around this time, Muslim men started to marry converted Armenian girls. As one can discern from Bogharian's diary entries, the deportations were not only intended to exterminate every Armenian in the Ottoman Empire but also to allow a large number of individuals to be absorbed as Muslims, although Armenian converts were investigated and their movements controlled as late as 1918.85 In April of that year, all provinces and districts were required to prepare a detailed list of Armenian converts, including such information as their names, the date and manner of their conversion, the names of family members, and their occupations.86 Through this, the Interior Minister sought to measure the loyalty of the converts to the state.

82 Ibid., 189. Common names bestowed upon those who converted included Cemil, Necip, and Şükrü, Yakup, Ahmet, Mustafa, and Ali.

85BOA.DH.ŞFR 86/45, Talat to Provinces, 3 April 1918; BOA.DH.ŞFR 87/ 259, Directorate for General Security to Mamuretül'aziz Province, 23 May 1918.

86Akçam, *The Young Turks' Crime Against Humanity*, 311.

83 Ibid., 191.

84 Ibid., 191.

### Conclusion

Bogharian ended his diary on December 19, 1916. In early December 1916, he started to work at two jobs in Salamiyya thanks to Cevad Effendi, the director of *Arazi Mülkiye* (Land Property) who helped him fnd a job there as a clerk assistant. From morning until noon, he worked at the Land Property clerk's offce and from noon until the evening he clerked as a fnancial agent.87 In this way, he took care of his family. Since he was working very hard, he may have stopped keeping his diary. In October 1918, the Ottoman Army retreated from Damascus, Homs and Hama. On October 30, the Mudros Armistice was signed. After the armistice, he worked as an assistant clerk for *Armenian National Community* founded, under the presidency of Der Nerses Tavukjian, in Hama on December 30, 1918.88 In 1919, Bogharian and his family fnally returned to Aintab, where the occupying Allied forces had established their authority.89

The Bilad al-Sham region saw a wave of Armenian deportees numbering in the tens of thousands and subsequently had the most sizeable population of Armenian genocide survivors. Exacerbating the brutal conditions that the deported Armenians faced were the rampant famine, disease, and death, further constricting the lives of the genocide survivors and forcing them to acclimate to a harsh environment fraught with challenges and struggles. Krikor Bogharian's diary represents a unique primary source offering valuable insights into the experiences of the Armenian genocide victims between 1915 and 1918. Although the nature of his personal writings may produce the greatest impact on historiographical research into this locality, the text as a whole delivers a piece of the puzzle in explaining how and why atrocities such as the Armenian genocide have transpired.

87Bogharian, *Orakro'wt'iwn Darakir Geanqis*, 205.

88Tavukjian*, Dar'abanqi Orakro'wt'iwn*, 176–77.

89By May 31, 1919, 4221 Armenians returned to Aintab. Between January 1 and July 20, 1919, 5607 Armenian refugees repatriated to Aintab; see US National Archives RG 84, Vol. 83, *Correspondence, American Consulate, Aleppo, 1919*, Jackson, Political and Economic Conditions, 31 May 1919; NA/RG59/867.00/897; NA/RG59/867.48/1316, Jackson to Secretary of State, August 23, 1919; Harutyun Simonian (ed.), *H'awelo'wazd: Ah'nt'abi Hah'o'c Badmo'wt'iwn* (Collected: History of Aintab Armenians) (Waltham: Mayreni, 1997), 105.

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## Categories and Their Interstices: The Armenian Genocide Beyond Resistance and Accommodation

*Khatchig Mouradian*

Elmasd Santoorian managed to achieve a relatively privileged position during the Armenian Genocide. A nurse by training, she was deported from her home town of Marash, contracted typhus soon after fnding shelter in Aleppo, and recovered from it with the help of an Armenian doctor, Khachig Boghossian, a deportee himself.1 Her newly acquired immunity

1Khachig Boghosian (1875–1950) was born in Kayseri, studied in Istanbul, and then traveled to Switzerland for his doctoral studies. Upon his return in 1914, he served as a military doctor in Constantinople, and was arrested along with other Armenian intellectuals in 1915. After spending several weeks in prison in Ayas and Cank ̧ ırı, he was deported and ended up in Aleppo, where he became active in the underground humanitarian resistance network assisting deportees. After the war, he stayed in Aleppo, where he continued his medical practice, helped found a maternity hospital, and established the newspaper *Yeprad*.

K. Mouradian (\*)

Library of Congress, Washington, DC, USA e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
© The Author(s) 2024 145

T. Kühne et al. (eds.), *Documenting the Armenian Genocide*, Palgrave Studies in the History of Genocide, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36753-3\_8

to typhus, her connection to Dr. Boghossian, and a smattering of good fortune helped her become the head nurse of an Ottoman military hospital in Aleppo's Azizieh quarter as the genocide raged on. From this locus of feeting but not insignifcant safety and authority, Santoorian hired "Armenian refugee girls, some orphaned, but all hiding from the gendarmes," helping save their lives. "I secured their work papers—which exempted them and their families from deportation and certain death," she wrote decades later.2

Santoorian was among those Armenians afforded the opportunity to avoid subsequent waves of deportation and massacres by working for the Ottoman Turkish military. The authorities needed their skills and were willing to "pay" for it by sparing their lives. To be sure, these deportees doctors, pharmacists, nurses, carpenters, seamstresses, and others whose skills and training the military deemed useful—constituted just a few thousand among more than half a million Armenian survivors from the initial rounds of violence who made it to Syria. But their numbers were large enough to make a difference not only for the Ottoman war effort, but also for the less fortunate deportees targeted for annihilation. Having secured a job in the military's hospitals and workshops thanks to their training, connections, and often bribes, these professionals often paid it forward, providing compatriots with food and medication, offering hideouts, facilitating their escape from concentration camps, and sometimes managing to procure jobs for them in the military.

I propose referring to these actors as interstitials—those operating in the interstices of collaboration and resistance. The study of these actors offers insight into an underexplored phenomenon in Armenian genocide studies, long dominated by cookie-cutter categories. Serving the Ottoman war effort *and* assisting those whom the state targeted for annihilation, interstitials invite us to think about mass atrocity not only through less stringent categories—a recent trend in the scholarship—but *outside* of them. In this approach, we entertain the possibility that members of the targeted group can, at the same time, work to save their own skin *and* help other victims, collaborate with perpetrators *and* resist their genocidal policies.

2Paren Kazanjian, ed., *The Cilician Armenian Ordeal* (Boston: Hye Intentions, 1989), 442–454. Here, 449. More than a quarter of a century after it appeared in this collection of survivor testimonies, Santourian's story was published in book form. See John Halajian, *A Widow's Story: Tales of an Armenian Genocide Survivor* (Mustang, OK: Tate Publishing, 2016).

In this chapter, I explore accommodation and resistance during the Armenian Genocide, focusing on the experiences of a variety of actors adults and children—deported to Ottoman Syria. I then examine the actions of Armenian doctors, pharmacists, and nurses who operated in the interstices of collaboration and resistance, arguing that those operating in this "grey zone" often stood a better chance of saving their own lives, and helping rescue many others caught in the maelstrom of deportation and massacres.

### Collaborators

Standing at the crossroads of resistance and collaboration may not have been the safest choice. Yet, many Armenians perceived efforts to distance themselves from those targeted for destruction, even profteer from them, and collude with the perpetrator community as the more prudent (and lucrative) of choices. Pharmacist Jivan Kaltakjian, a deportee from Kayseri, is a case in point. In the fall of 1915, when deportees camped near Bab were no longer allowed to visit the city to purchase goods or receive mail, Kaltakjian used his connections with Ottoman offcials to exploit deportees and accumulate wealth. He would secure written authorization from deportees to go to the post offce on their behalf and claim the money family members had sent them only to betray them by splitting the funds with the police and camp guards. Meanwhile, the victims of his schemes would be redeported to another camp.3

Kaltakjian's conduct was hardly an exception. Ottoman authorities had rendered swaths of Syrian territory as breeding grounds for bribery, extortion, and profteering from Armenian deportees. And although the main benefciaries were the state's functionaries, the latter often relied on the collusion of deportees. Armenian colluders exposed hideouts to the police, extorted exorbitant bribes from their compatriots, and stole humanitarian aid allocated to them. In a notebook chronicler Aram Andonian compiled after the war, names of Armenian collaborators appeared alongside those

3Khatchig Mouradian, *The Resistance Network: The Armenian Genocide and Humanitarianism in Ottoman Syria, 1915–1918* (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2021), 83. For an overview of concentration camps during the Armenian genocide, see "Internment and Destruction: Concentration Camps during the Armenian Genocide, 1915–1916," in Panikos Panayi, Stefan Manz, and Matthew Stibbe, eds., *Internment during the First World War: A Mass Global Phenomenon* (London: Routledge Studies in First World War History, 2018), 145–161.

of Turkish, Kurdish, Chechen, Circassian, and Arab perpetrators. These included Hayg Boyajian and Hrant Mamigonian, both from Aleppo, who worked for the authorities as agents and denouncers; Garabed Momjian who abused his position and stole deportee aid; and Rev. Artin Khachadurian, a relief committee member throughout the war who, according to Andonian, enriched himself by stealing deportee relief money.4

Exploitation and profteering were even more widespread in concentration camps. Armenian *bekci*s (guards), serving as enforcers for camp offcials, demanded bribes and engaged in wanton violence against fellow deportees. Some were auxiliaries in traffcking, rape, and even murder. Artin Çavus Nordigian (from Adana), the head of the guards in the Dipsi ̧ camp, took bribes to allow deportees in transit to stay overnight at the camp before marching onward.5 Mgrdich Bozouklian (from Nevsehir), ̧ the head of the guards in the Karlık transit site outside of Aleppo, served as a brutal enforcer for camp offcials and military offcers. When an Ottoman offcer by the name of Aziz Bey fancied a twelve-year-old Armenian girl, Bozouklian abducted her for him. The offcer enslaved her until he was dispatched to Damascus a year later and had to let her go. According to Andonian, Bozouklian helped deportation functionaries at Karlık violate several other girls and women. When the Allies entered Aleppo, he escaped to Aintab, where his family had lived during the war.

Nonetheless, collusion did not guarantee survival. Kaltakjian enriched himself at the Bab camp and then left in late spring 1916 for Der Zor, where he hoped to live comfortably under the patronage of Zeki Bey, the newly appointed district governor whom he considered a friend. However, bandits killed him on the city outskirts. Andonian recalled that the deportees in the Meskeneh concentration camp cheered upon hearing the news of his death. Survivor Hovhannes Khacherian offered a more restrained sendoff: "As if for the multiple evils he committed, [Jivan] eventually became one of the victims of the massacre. Yet neither I, nor many others will shed a tear for him."6

Khacherian's words imply some supernatural retribution for Kaltakjian's crimes. In the case of many other collaborators, the deportees they

4 Survivors made sure to mention the names of Armenian camp guards who abused deportees when they listed names of perpetrators. In his memoir, survivor Hagop Seropian names ten of such collaborators in the camps whom he considers "the most evil." Mouradian, *The Resistance Network*, 75.

5 Ibid., 106.

6Mouradian, *The Resistance Network*, 83.

victimized reached them before karma did. Most Armenian camps guards lost their authority when they were redeported to other camps and were rendered helpless against acts of retribution from other inmates. Similarly, informants in cities such as Aleppo and Istanbul were hunted down in the aftermath of the war by Armenian avengers. One of the frst assignments of Soghomon Tehlirian, who assassinated Talat Pasha in Berlin in 1921, had been to kill an Armenian informant a year earlier.7

Children collaborated too. Administrators of a state orphanage in Antoura where Armenian children were Turkifed (they were converted to Islam, circumcised, given Muslim names, and forced to speak only Turkish) adopted control tactics similar to those in the concentration camps. Karnig Panian, a survivor of the orphanage, explains how "a few of the older Armenian boys … became the overseers in the classrooms. They carried whips to help keep order both inside the classrooms and outside in the courtyard. They had names like Küçük Enver, Küçük Talaat, Küçük Jemal, Küçük Hasan."8 [Küçük means little or junior in Turkish, while the names are those of Young Turk leaders. K.M.] The boys who collaborated with the school administrators enjoyed some benefts until the Ottoman defeat and withdrawal from Syria, at which point the overseers "cast off their wolf's clothing; they became sheep again.

But not everyone was accepted into the fold. "One boy from Marash, who had become completely Turkifed, did his best to atone for his sins by relearning Armenian and constantly insulting the Turkish language and the old Turkish staff." Some of the children at the orphanage clearly thought his efforts were too little, too late. "One morning, his body was found right outside the walls, beaten beyond recognition. Nobody ever knew what had happened to him or who had killed him. He was buried in the cemetery and left to the jackals."9

7Unlike the assassination of Turkish perpetrators, which has received ample attention from scholars and journalists, the history of Armenian collaborators who were targeted during and in the aftermath of the Armenian genocide remains to be written.

8Karnig Panian, *Goodbye, Antoura: A Memoir of the Armenian Genocide* (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2015), 84–85.

9 Ibid., 149.

### Resisters

Those who selfessly toiled to save deportees did not finch at the risk of exile, arrest, and death. Armenians engaged in resistance as soon as the Committee of Union and Progress enacted the empire-wide arrests, deportations, and massacres in the spring of 1915. In the aftermath of the April 24 arrests, Shavarsh Misakian, an Armenian leader and intellectual in Istanbul who had escaped arrest, organized a clandestine chain of communication between the Ottoman provinces, Istanbul, and the outside world, smuggling reports of atrocities out of the country.10

Others organized groups for self-help efforts. They procured, transferred, and distributed funds, food, and medication to exiles, saved them from sexual slavery, created safe houses and underground orphanages, and upheld deportee morale as hundreds of communities were forcibly removed from their ancestral lands and marched in the direction of Syria. In *The Resistance Network*, I explore the role of an indigenous, organized, and sustained effort to help deportees, led by Aleppo's Armenian community. These groups were loosely interlinked, operating out of cities where the population was only partly deported (Istanbul and Aleppo), and along railroad lines stretching from Istanbul to Konya, Aleppo, Ras ul-Ain, and Mosul.

Gulenia Danielian's words about her husband, Rev. Hovhannes Eskijian, capture the efforts of these resisters in general: "Barely out of bed from his sickness, disregarding the personal hardships and peril to his own life, relentlessly labored day and night to save other lives."11 Until his death in March 1916, Rev. Eskijian provided food, shelter, and medication to Armenian deportees arriving in Aleppo. As the pastor's health was failing, the Ottoman Turkish authorities were tracking his movements. The disease got to him frst. He died at thirty-four from typhoid contracted from the deportees he served. Rev. Eskijian was one among hundreds of Armenians in Ottoman Syria who chose—and this was a conscious, deliberate choice with full appreciation of the risks—the path of direct confrontation with the Ottoman Turkish authorities. The efforts of nearly all the

10A collection of primary source documents pertaining to this extraordinary effort of unarmed resistance was recently published in Lebanon. See Yervant Pamboukian, ed., *Medz Yegherni Arachin Vaverakroghe' Shavarsh Misakian* [The First Chronicler of the Great Crime: Shavarsh Misakian] (Antelias, Lebanon: Catholicosate of Cilicia, 2017).

11Mouradian, *The Resistance Network*, xv.

central actors in the clandestine humanitarian network radiating from Aleppo were interrupted by exile, imprisonment, or murder.

The resistance network also relied on children's assistance. Here's how John Minassian, a teenage deportee from Sivas, describes his role:

I became a messenger from the railroad station back to the Reverend's [reference to Rev. Eskijian, K.M.] house, a dangerous job. I took the sick to the physician and, worse yet, visited daily almost all the underground hideouts in Aleppo. College professors, ministers, and young graduates in hiding were all subject to arrest. The Reverend would give me money to hand out to these people, and they, in return, would ask me to buy food for them, or a little charcoal to warm their cold, dark rooms. They were in constant fear that the government's arm would reach them and re-deport them.12

Away from urban centers, in the Meskeneh concentration camp, a number of women who witnessed the destitute condition of children set up an orphanage on March 11, 1916. Three women from Nigde assumed responsibility for the care of orphans, with support from a priest, Yetvart Tarpinian, who had arrived in Meskeneh only a week earlier.13 As word spread, more and more orphans came to the tent. What started as a shelter for a few soon provided refuge to one hundred children. The women frantically tried to secure supplies for their charges: they pleaded with camp offcials, asked deportees for donations and tried to solicit outside help. They were not always successful. One of the women, Rakel Kirazian, was beaten up on several occasions by the *anbâr memuru* (warehouse offcial) Ali Riza for repeatedly requesting food for the starving children. Some deportees at the camp gave from the little they had. Those who got married at the camp—and there were indeed dozens who did so, either despite or because of the destitute conditions at the camp and the uncertain future—made donations to the orphanage to celebrate the occasion.14 The most signifcant assistance came from two Evangelical Armenian women who were referred to as "members of the *ruhci* sect." They offered to provide bread to the orphans regularly and did so, with funds from a

12Minassian, John. *Many Hills Yet to Climb* (Santa Barbara, CA: Jim Cook, 1986), 93.

13Levon Mesrob, ed., *1915: Aghed yev Veradzenount* (1915: Disaster and Rebirth) (Paris: Arax Publishing, 1952), p. 459.

14Mesrob, *1915: Aghed yev Veradzenount*, p. 460.

German woman missionary based in Aleppo.15 After a confrontation with camp director Hüseyin, two of the women and many of the orphans in the tent were deported to Der Zor, where most of them perished.16

Although Minassian survived the genocide, most resisters, including Rev. Eskijian and Kirazian did not. Pushing themselves "to the very limit of [their] endurance," these resisters saved the lives of many, but their actions cost them their freedom and, often, their lives.

### Interstitials

Commenting on the stringent categories that dominate the study of mass atrocities, philosopher John K. Roth writes, "A three-term taxonomy perpetrator, victim, bystander—has long dominated studies of the Holocaust, genocide, and other mass atrocities. In such contexts, those terms are not separable, static, or purely descriptive. The intentions and actions of perpetrators entail victims, and victims do not exist without perpetrators. The power of perpetrators and the vulnerability of victims also depend on bystanders. Importantly, a person is not by nature—born or preordained—to be one or the other. A person becomes a perpetrator, a victim, or a bystander."17

In a similar vein, members of targeted groups—the victims in the above taxonomy—are often either stripped of agency and lumped into one amorphous category, or identifed as resisters or collaborators. And while Holocaust historiography boasts a decades-long tradition of striving for a nuanced treatment of these categories, the study of other cases of genocide—most certainly the Armenian one—lag far behind. Yet, as mentioned earlier in this essay, the Armenian case illustrates—arguably more so than the Holocaust—the limitations of stringent categories and the importance of thinking of the actors operating outside of them: in the interstices of collaboration and resistance. After all, the proportion of Armenian deportees who were afforded the opportunity to inhabit this space was much higher compared to the Jewish people during the Holocaust. Not only did

15Mesrob, *1915: Aghed yev Veradzenount*, pp. 460–461. Tarpinian does not mention the name of the missionary in his account. He admits that "I was against turning a nation that was being persecuted for their religion and ethnicity to be the plaything of sect members, but did not dare prohibit them, because they were providing bread."

16Mesrob, *1915: Aghed yev Veradzenount*, p. 461.

17 John K. Roth, *The Failures of Ethics: Confronting the Holocaust, Genocide, and Other Mass Atrocities* (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 12.

thousands of Armenians in cities and towns in Ottoman Syria alone survive in part due to jobs they had secured with the Ottoman military, many thousands of others escaped massacres because of their connections to these employees.

It is important to emphasize that only a fraction of Armenian doctors, nurses, and others with skills deemed useful to the military survived the genocide. Most others perished in the initial rounds of deportations and violence, or the subsequent internment and massacres in Ottoman Syria. And the thousands who managed to secure jobs often did as a result of enormous toil, connections, bribes, and certainly happenstance. Hagop Arsenian notes in his memoirs that many of his fellow pharmacist deportees, for instance, secured documentation as military pharmacists upon arrival in Ottoman Syria, thus evading further deportation and death.18 In Bab, Arsenian "appealed to the military governor and testifed to my being a certifed pharmacist and requested that I be taken into military service as they had done with others." The attempt failed. "In an extremely ironic and mercilessly rude tone, he advised me to go to Der Zor and apply there."19 Deported from one camp to the other along the Euphrates, Arsenian arrived in Abuharar, where he "started giving medicine and treating gendarmes for free and they in return allowed me to stay there. We thus succeeded in staying for a while longer as doctor and pharmacist.20 Finally, in July 1915, just a month before the Der Zor massacres that claimed the lives of 200,000 Armenians in the region, Arsenian secured the coveted position of military pharmacist that saved his life and that of his family. He writes:

Eventually, I was accepted to the position of military pharmacist and permission was granted to me to travel to Jerusalem in my newly assigned duty there. I was eternally grateful to the old military physician Kaimakam Baghdasar Bey [an Armenian doctor, K.M.], who did not spare any means or effort to fnd me a position.21

We can think of interstitials during the Armenian Genocide such as Arsenian as actors operating in a space not drastically different from what

18Hagop Arsenian, *Towards Golgotha: The Memoirs of Hagop Arsenian, a Genocide Survivor*, trans. Arda Arsenian Ekmekji (Beirut: Haigazian University Press, 2011), 97–98. 19 Ibid., 106.

20 Ibid., 118.

21 Ibid., 128.

Holocaust survivor and writer Primo Levi refers to as the "gray zone."22 Another helpful formulation comes from Holocaust scholar Lawrence Langer, who distinguishes between "selfsh" acts and "self-ish" ones. He writes:

The selfsh act ignores the needs of others through choice when the agent is in a position to help without injuring one's self in any appreciable way. Selfshness is motivated by greed, indifference, malice, and many other value-laden categories. The former victim who describes self-ish acts is vividly aware of the needs of others but because of the nature of the situation is unable to choose freely the generous impulse that a compassionate nature yearns to express.23

Interstitials during the Armenian Genocide may indeed have operated in a "gray zone" of sorts and often opted for "self-ish" acts (like the kapos in concentration camps during the Holocaust), yet there is a nuance that cannot be overstated: Armenian actors serving as doctors, nurses and pharmacists in the Ottoman army or laboring in military uniform factories were *not* direct participants in the mechanics of destruction. And while it can be argued that any labor in support of the Turkish military effort, minuscule as it may have been, helped prolong the war and, hence, the genocide, the distinction remains an important one. Moreover, Armenian interstitials often engaged in acts of mutual help and even resistance helping save fellow Armenian deportees and thus acting *against* the will and sanction of the authorities.

Take, for instance, the case of Arika Amiralian, who ran a uniform production factory for the Turkish military. Survivor Loossin Chorbajian Najarian remembered how he and his parents secured employment in 1917.

In Aleppo, my father found a job in a Turkish military workshop called "Imaret Khaneh," the director of which was an Armenian lady from Marash, Mrs. Arika Amiralian. Military uniforms were made there. Shortly thereafter, my mother too started working there and soon was made a supervisor.

22Primo Levi, *The Drowned and the Saved* (London: Abacus, 1989), 22–51.

23Lawrence Langer, *Holocaust testimonies: The Ruins of Memory* (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991), 124.

The Arabs used to call her "moodira" (directoress). I was now old enough myself to work and so I became a salaried employee of the same place.24

Survivor Yeranuhi Simonian too worked in one such factory, if not the same one directed by Amiralian, until the end of the war.25 So did Payladzou Captanian, who signed up to avoid redeportation as soon as she heard about the workshops. A red and white piece of cloth with the inscription "women of the Third Army" was sewn onto their outfts, allowing them to walk freely in the city. "The government gave three pieces of bread to each of us on a daily basis, in return for our labor. Rich and poor, all came to work here, only to avoid exile," she remembered.26 Walter Rossler, the German Consul in Aleppo, reported in November 1916 that "each of the indigenous church administrations has taken over such workhouses, so that in total about 4,000 women have temporarily been saved in this manner."27 Survivor Yervant Odian recalled that by March 1918, more than fve thousand deportees labored in these workshops.28

Some interstitials engaged in more dangerous acts of defance and resistance than others, often paying dearly for it. Dr. Hovhannes Magarian (deportee from Elbistan), beneftting from the opportunity to work for the district governor of Der Zor, secured a special permit that anchored him in the city. He was soon appointed health inspector general for deportees in the region and helped with the procurement of bread to some deportees. "The respected doctor had created an immediate wellbeing among the general deportee population, taking particular care of women exiled from Armenia." Witnessing the horrors of the genocide, Magarian suffered a nervous breakdown and, within two months, "died in

24Kazanjian, ed., *The Cilician Armenian Ordeal,* 380.

25Yeranuhi Simonian, *Im Koghkotas* [My Golgotha] (Antelias: Armenian Catholicosate, 1960), 58.

26Payladzou Captanian, *Tsavag* (New York: Armenia Printing, 1922), 260.

27DE/PA-AA; R14094; A 31831, report from Rossler to Bethmann Hollweg, on 5 November 1916, in Wolfgang Gust, ed., *The Armenian Genocide: Evidence from the German Foreign Offce Archives, 1915–1916* (New York: Berghahn, 2014), 673.

28Yervant Odian, *Accursed Years: My Exile and Return from Der Zor, 1914–1919* (London: Gomidas Institute, 2009), 235.

severe seizures, and did not even have someone to carry his coffn," recounted survivor Mihran Aghazarian.29

### Conclusion

"Multidimensional investigation of the Armenian Genocide has now begun," declared Richard G. Hovannisian in the introduction to an edited volume four decades ago.30 Following the pioneering work of Vahakn N. Dadrian, a handful of scholars—chief among them Taner Akçam and Raymond Kévorkian—have produced a robust literature on the precipitating factors and mechanics of the genocide, laying the foundations for a truly multidimensional investigation by a generation of scholars working on regional and local dynamics as well as explorations of gender, resistance, and humanitarianism. My own research on the genocide in Ottoman Syria and Armenian agency is one of many anchored in this framework.

In this essay, I build on my earlier work documenting the range of responses of Armenian deportees caught in the maelstrom of the Armenian Genocide to explore the experiences of deportee actors who operated in the interstices of resistance and collaboration. Serving the Ottoman military through various jobs *and* assisting fellow Armenians caught in the genocide, interstitials not only challenge stringent taxonomies such as "collaborator" or "resister," but also invite us to think about the spaces in the interstices of such categories. Thousands of deportees during the Armenian genocide tried, at the same time, to save their own skin *and* engage in mutual help. Many collaborated with perpetrators, while waiting out the war *and* resisting their policies.

Ironically, for many of these interstitials, Ottoman Turkish withdrawal from Syria in October 1918 meant the loss of both their oppressors *and* their rations. And while their actions may not have been as selfess and relentless as the efforts of resisters, they too played a part in salvaging a fraction of the nation.

29Mihran Aghazarian, *Aksoragani Husher* [Memoirs of an Exile] (Adana: Hay Tsayn Printing House, 1919), 17–18.

30Richard G. Hovannisian, *The Armenian Genocide: History, Politics, Ethics* (London: Macmillan, 1992), xiv.

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### The Property Law and the Spoliation of Ottoman Armenians

*Raymond H. Kévorkian*

The genocide perpetrated against the Ottoman Armenians obviously had several dimensions: in addition to the physical destruction of the population, the appropriation of all collective and individual assets, in other words the systematic spoliation of a historical group for the beneft of a state or of private individuals. Beyond the extreme violence perpetrated to accomplish these criminal aims, the later management of such spoils remains a legal headache that will take generations and a panoply of laws to digest.

This aspect is all the more important since, for more than a century, it has perpetuated a material memory of the Armenian presence through houses, schools, churches, and so on, which have survived or still survive. In certain respects, spoliation constitutes a central element of the immoral development of individual and collective actors. Moreover, it clearly furnished a foundation for the construction of the modern Turkish state. It is even today one of the central reasons for the denial organized by the Turkish state and shared by a large part of Turkish society. It is this issue that we propose to examine here over time.

R. H. Kévorkian (\*)

University of Paris 8 Saint-Denis, Paris, France

© The Author(s) 2024 159

T. Kühne et al. (eds.), *Documenting the Armenian Genocide*, Palgrave Studies in the History of Genocide, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36753-3\_9

### "National Assets"

The case of the Armenians is part of a state and legal context, that of an Ottoman Empire in which not all constituent groups enjoyed the same rights under the law. We are talking here about non-Muslims. In other words, when it comes to "national assets" belonging to Armenian institutions like the Armenian Patriarchate and humanitarian or educational foundations, for instance, their status seems to have evolved over time and, by extension, was more or less assimilated to that of the Muslim institutions better known as *waqf* (charitable foundations), in conformity with Sharia law. Properties belonging to God are by defnition inalienable, and are usually dedicated to a specifc purpose that the benefciaries were supposed to respect in their day-to-day management; but this defnition could not apply to Christian places of worship, whose development was contrary to Sharia.1 In other words, in the absence of a decree from the sultan himself, the status of a religious establishment could not be regularized by a Sharia court, nor was there any question of envisaging the construction of a new building. Law and politics were thus closely intertwined and required Armenian institutions to jump through countless administrative hoops in a process that could last dozens of years. In most cases, however, the oral testimony of a witness was the principal element retained by the courts to confrm the legality of a *waqf*, unless the person held a decree signed by the sultan himself.

A note on the ways of making donations of *waqf* properties, written by jurists from the Armenian Patriarchate of Constantinople recommends, in Article 3, that donors "entrust the settling of the estate to the Patriarch, in the case of those living in Constantinople, and to the archbishops, for those living outside the city."2

The practical information contained in this document further indicates that the donation can be made to a church or a school, a monastery or a

1Hüseyin Hatemi, "Cemaat Vakıfarı Konusunda Düsünceler" [Refection on the minority ̧ foundations], in Prof. Dr. Ergun Özsunay'a Armağan [Mélanges in honor of Prof. Dr. Ergun Özsunay] (Istanbul, Vedat Kitapçılık, 2004), p. 803, cited in Fondation H. Dink, *From Empire to Republic, the Waqf* [Foundations system in Ottoman Law and Non-Muslims], available at: http://istanbulermenivakifari.org/en/minority-foundations/legal-andhistorical-process/102.

2 Կտակի, նէրի եւ վագֆի վերաբերեալ ինչ ինչ օրինական ընդհանր տրամադրթիւնք [Legal measures concerning legacies, donations and vakıf] (Constantinople, Armenian Patriarchate, April 1893), p. 6

hospital, but only "to satisfy the needs of poor students or the sick".3 In addition, anyone can make a *waqf* donation of his land rents (*mulk*), money or real estate in the following ways: (a) he can retain lifelong usufruct, with the benefciaries entering into full possession of the legacy upon the donor's death; (b) he can also receive the income from the *waqf* during his lifetime; (c) he can assign part of the *waqf* revenues to his children, grandchildren, parents and strangers; (d) he can require part of the income from the legacy to be reinvested in the capital; (e) he can retain the right to change the conditions of the management and distribution of a *waqf*. 4

One last important detail: since a *waqf* is inalienable, the "assets that make up the *waqf* cannot be withheld or sold; only the distribution of the income can be modifed as the circumstances dictate."5 The same document recalls that there are categories of real property that cannot be inherited or transformed into *waqf;* these are: *emlakı mevkufe* and *arazi emiriye* properties.6 There were, therefore, appropriate mechanisms for transforming belongings, according to their nature, from personal to "national" assets, a terminology commonly employed when talking about properties belonging to Armenian institutions.

The transformations that occurred throughout Armenian society in the Ottoman Empire in the 1860s would gradually restrict the prerogatives of the religious orders, or at least impose the centralization of their control, modeled on the state itself; these restrictions came from the Armenian authorities, in this case the services of the administration of the Armenian Patriarchate of Constantinople.7 In the 1870s, this administration went on to impose even stricter methods of management.

Two committees were directly involved in the administration of *waqf* assets:

• The Administrative Committee, made up of seven elected members was responsible for the administration and upkeep of "national assets" (churches, real estate, businesses, mills, rental properties,

7For an idea of the administrative structures of the Armenian Patriarchate, see Raymond Kévorkian & Paul Paboudjian, *Les Arméniens dans l'Empire ottoman à la veille du genocide* (Paris: Arhis, 1992), pp. 7–10.

3 *Ibidem*.

4 *Ibidem*, pp. 8–10, Article 11.

5 *Ibidem*, p. 12.

6 *Ibidem*, p. 16.

etc.) and the income from them (collection of rents, taxes), purchase and sale of real-estate properties, verifcation of the legacies, expenditures and revenues concerning hospitals, parish council accounts and the establishment of the draft budget.8

• The Monasteries Committee, made up of seven appointed members, was responsible for overseeing the administration of the convents, which was in turn carried out by the religious congregations. The same committee published regular detailed accounts of its activities, which provided some indication of the way the bulk of the *waqf* held by Armenian institutions were managed.9

Among the *waqf* held by the monastic congregations were one hundred sixty more or less wealthy active convents,10 and nearly three hundred other convents that were unoccupied or had been confscated by local feudal chiefs, mainly Kurdish beys.

With the internal reform carried out under the services of the Patriarchate in the 1870s, the religious congregations and the provincial dioceses were required to report to the authorities in Istanbul and to keep current lists of their properties and indicate those that did not have a *tapu* or deed.11

In 1871, the Patriarchate decided to update the list of "national assets"; in other words, assets that were *waqf* or considered to be such, which were managed by the parish councils.12 It must be remembered, though, that in the case of non-Muslim foundations, it was forbidden to mention a community institution as benefciary in the deed of a *waqf*. This legal obstacle could be circumvented by the use of a method known as the "right of

8This committee was charged with administering assets (*Avantits Tivan*). It was required to keep up-to-date records of all "national moveable and immovable properties," and to ensure that the attendant incomes were collected by the Patriarchal tax collectors: *Statut de l'administration du patriarcat, présenté à la chambre nationale le 20 mars 1913* (Constantinople, Patriarchate, 1913), Article 15, §2, p. 7.

9 Համարատթիւն Ազգային Կեդրոնական Վարջթեան Վանօրէից [Minutes of the Central council of monasteries], *1872–1874* աﬕն (Constantinople: Armenian Patriarchate, 1874).

10 *Ibidem*, pp. 32–34. List of 160 active monasteries, with the name of their superior, not counting monasteries that were no longer active or those that were in ruins.

11 *Ibidem*, p. 2.

12 Տեղեկագիր Համարատթեան Տնտեսական Խորհրդոյ [Report concerning the accounts by the council of Finances], *1872* (Constantinople: Editions of Patriarcat, 1872), pp. 2 & 32.

collusion" (*muvazaa*).13 That is, the trustee would call upon a third party to act for him, as, for example, a church that asks a trustworthy person one of its administrators, most often a priest—to register a real-estate property in his own name. The prohibition could also be circumvented by registering the property concerned under a fctitious name, that of a saint, the Virgin Mary, Christ, son of Joseph, and so on.

The table of the expenditures and revenue of the Patriarchal administration for the fscal year 1872–1873, which includes those of the Patriarch himself, shows that, out of a total operating budget of 614,000 Turkish pounds, 120,000 came from revenues generated by *waqf* directly attached to the Patriarchate,14 which comes to nearly 20% of the sums entered. This amount is an indication of the considerable value of the assets held by the Patriarchate alone.

### Private Assets

The status of private real-estate properties, too, was long governed by the immutable rules established in the traditionally Muslim empire. The sultan owned, as it were, the assets of all his subjects but granted them the right to use them as they pleased. And so, what one passed on from one generation to the next was more the usufruct of a property than the property itself, in the European sense of the term. Modernization of the Ottoman state meant centralizing power and setting up an effcient administration—in other words applying a European model to the empire. The result was a series of political and socio-economic transformations whose scope had clearly not been anticipated by the instigators. The new Ottoman land code, adopted in 1858, instituted individual property, in the European sense, but it was immediately hijacked or exploited by the tribal chiefs, sheiks and other urban *agha*s in view of obtaining the property deeds that would challenge customary rights, in other words the usufruct of lands that had been enjoyed by generations of peasants but without beneft of the slightest offcial document.

13*Muvazaa* is the name given the pre-arranged act in which each party agrees to have recourse to a third party. Setrak Davuthan, untitled article in *Cemaat Vakıfarı, Bugünkü Sorunları ve Çözüm Önerileri* [*Non-Muslim foundations, their problems today and the suggested solutions*] (Istanbul: Bar Association Human Rights Center Publications, 2002), p. 13. 14 *Ibidem*, Table pp. 52–53.

After the 1878 Berlin Congress, which turned the Armenian question into an issue of territory and politics in which land played a central role, the state encouraged a new political occupation of land. This policy not only encouraged the spoliation of Armenian peasants, but also settled "Circassian" refugees from the North Caucasus in the Armenian provinces and the Balkans.15 The concentration of domains in the hands of a few, rarely qualifed to farm them, accelerated a process of depopulation of the region as the peasants were dispossessed of their livelihood and de facto excluded from their ancestral lands. This was the end of an age-old "symbiosis" established by the sultans, which had consisted in allowing the Kurdish population to settle in Armenian localities, which were then given "godfathers" from the Kurdish tribes who ensured their security in return for goods and services provided by the Armenian peasants. The consequences were pauperization, rural exodus, emigration or simply conversion to Islam. Furthermore, the Sublime Porte experienced the greatest diffculty in imposing centralization, which challenged the power of local tribes; nor was the collection of taxes or the draft any easier in these regions whose masters had until then been the tribal chiefs.

The formation of Hamidiye light cavalry gave rise to considerable political and social change in all of the vilayets in the east.16 Appointed by the sultan, the heads of these militia—approximately 60,000 men—became the new "masters" of the region, replacing the former feudal families. The regiments not only repressed the Armenians but also and especially policed the region on behalf of the sultan and the empire. They enjoyed a number of privileges in exchange for "working in the interests of the empire, or at least for not working against it."17 They were allowed to appropriate the lands of sedentary peasants, whether Armenians or Kurds, since that helped deprive these "internal enemies" of their means of subsistence, even if the offcial rationale for these militias was the necessity of combatting "Armenian revolutionaries."

15Kemal Karpat, *Ottoman Population, 1830–1914: Demography and social characteristics* (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), p. 69. Karpat estimates that 2 million Caucasians, in the majority Circassians, migrated to Turkey between 1855 and 1866, and another half million after 1879.

16 Janet Klein, "Power in the Periphery: The Hamidiye Light Cavalry and the Struggle over Ottoman Kurdistan, 1890–1914," Doctoral dissertation, Princeton University, 2002, p. 5.

17Klein, *op. cit*., p. 6.

The spoliation procedures, which targeted primarily agricultural lands, in other words the peasant's livelihood, were extremely varied, but in many ways similar both before and after the formation of the Hamidiye light cavalry. The case of the Hayderan tribal chief, Hüseyin Pasha, whose tribe dominated the lands along the Turko-Persian border, is exemplary. Reputed for his violent dealings with villagers, imprisoned several times but always set free, he was appointed head of a *Hamidiye* regiment in 1891.18 He took advantage of his new position to continue to harass the Armenian villages, which he systematically emptied of their inhabitants, replacing them with newly settled Kurds.

By creating the *Hamidiye* regiments and giving their chiefs a right of predation, the sultan hoped to obtain the submission of a new generation of Kurdish tribal chiefs. These he intended to use for various forms of harassment designed to create a permanent state of insecurity and socioeconomic precariousness in view of driving the Armenian populations into exile. This strategy, with its obvious demographic consequences, sparked reactions of self-preservation and in particular self-defense movements that were all the more revolutionary for following in the wake of dozens of years of persecutions and spoliations. The land issue, which had become a matter of survival, became even more acute with the massacres perpetrated between 1894 and 1896. The 135 volumes of complaints recorded by the Armenian Patriarchate between 1890 and 1910 list some 7,000 cases of spoliation of lands in thirty-two departments (*sancak*).19

At the end of the day, one of the major consequences of these massacres was the transfer of Armenian lands to the Kurdish tribal chiefs.20 Many villages, for instance in the region of d'Ercis, were emptied of their ̧ Armenian population and directly occupied by *Hamidiye*. 21 Janet Klein documents in remarkable detail the effects of these massacres on the people and the land. In particular she emphasizes that after the massacres, the lands of Armenian emigrants and fugitives were considered by the local land registry to be *mahlul* ("abandoned") and were allocated or sold to

18Klein*, op. cit*., pp. 272–273.

19 Տեղեկագիր Հողային Գրաւմանց Յանձնաժողովոյ [*Report of the Commission on spoliated lands*], t. I (Constantinople: Armenian Patriarchate, 1910), p. 3; and a summary in four volumes (Constantinople, 1910–1912); Տեղեկագիր համառատթեան, *1912–1914* [Activity report] (Constantinople: Armenian Patriarchate, 1914), p. 101 *ff.*

20 *Ibidem*, pp. 287–290, for numerous examples of the spoliation of whole villages.

21 Report of the British consul in Van, Williams, to Currie, no. 10, Van, 12 March 1897: P.R.O, F.O. 424/191, FO 195/1985.

Muslims. In some cases, a whole village was occupied and its population exterminated or driven out.22 In the Akhlat and Bulanik districts, in 1897, villagers were still being forced to yield their lands, together with their offcial documents, to Kurdish chiefs in order to secure their protection.23 In any case, these events facilitated the policy of sedentarizing the Kurdish tribes through the transfer of land. This contributed greatly to the disintegration of the Armenian territory, something of which the Armenian political elites were perfectly aware even from Constantinople.

### The Constitutional Period (1908–1914)

When the Constitution was re-established, after the July 1908 constitutional revolution that brought the Committee for Union and Progress (CUP) to power and allowed the Armenian political class to emerge from hiding, the Armenian Chamber of Representatives renewed its membership and held its frst session in October of the same year. The Political Council, headed by the liberal Stepan Karayan, was soon faced with the painful realities on the ground: alarming news of continuing insecurity poured into the Patriarchate. At the 17 October session, the lawyer Krikor Zohrab presented the Chamber with a report on the overall situation in Armenia and the means to improve it. Despite the proclamation of the Constitution, he stressed, nothing had really changed: the governors continued the Hamidian policy; famine had driven several thousands to seek refuge in the capital, where they were being maintained by the Patriarchate. In reply, Zohrab proposed the creation of a fact-fnding mission composed of Turks and Armenians, which would have executive powers; dismissal of the Hamidiye valis and offcers found guilty of abuse of power; prosecution of looters and assassins before a Constantinople court of justice; return of confscated lands to their legitimate owners; rights and waivers for exiles wanting to return home similar to those accorded the *muhajir*; a ban on the continuing ransom of peasants by the *beys* and *aghas*; emergency aid for populations on the brink of famine in the form of wheat and seed.24 Archbishop Mattheos Izmirlian, newly returned from exile,

22Klein, *op. cit*., p. 288; Bitlis, 25 July 1910: P.R.O, F.O. 424/224.

23 *Ibidem*, p. 289.

24Ատենագրթիւն Ազգային Ժողովոյ, Վերաբացմ 1908–1909 Նստաշրջանի [Minutes of the National Chamber, opening of the 1908–1909] (Constantinople: 1909), pp. 39 and 49–54.

suggested urgent relief for destitute farmers in the form of beasts of burden and farming tools. During the same session it was reported that the refugees returning from the Caucasus after the proclamation of the Constitution had been unable to reclaim their lands, which were occupied by Kurds.25 The Chamber therefore formed a delegation charged with taking these issues before the Sublime Porte. Led by Zohrab, Hrant Assadur and Dr. Torkomian, they were assured by the authorities that every means would be used to restore the Armenians in their rights.26

Nevertheless, Consul reports show that the situation remained tense and there were threats of massacre in the Armenian provinces.27 The Kurdish tribal chiefs and the local Turkish dignitaries saw the Armenians' newfound freedom as a provocation. The Ittihad leaders did not disband the Hamidiye cavalries, they simply renamed them. They were now known as Asiret Haff Süvari Alaylar ̧ ı. All of these initiatives were presented as a policy for securing safety and order, but in reality, the regiments stayed in place and in November 1908 offcially became "reserve militias."28

Under the guidance of local authorities, the policy of the Committee of Union and Progress to placate the tribal chiefs amounted to nothing more than expressions of good will. The expropriated farmers continued to complain to the Armenian Chamber in Constantinople. At frst the Chamber simply brought the *takrir* (offcial complaints) before the appropriate services of the Ottoman government, but it soon became clear that these were no longer simply time-honored abuses of power but a concerted policy emanating from the highest authorities of the state.29 Negotiations were begun between the Political Council and the *Defteraharhane* in view of restoring the rights of the peasants. In fact, however, in the name of the law and of the reorganization of the state administration, the authorities launched a counter-attack on the sensitive issue of national assets, demanding the deeds to the properties. The Armenian response was obvious. Most of the assets in question, in

25 *Ibidem*, p. 55.

26 *Ibidem*, p. 57.

27Dikran Mesrob Kaligian, *The Armenian Revolutionary Federation under Ottoman Constitutional Rule, 1908–1914*, Doctoral Dissertation, Boston College, 2003, p. 50.

28Klein, *op. cit.*, Part III, pp. 191–255, esp. p. 214. At the same time, the CUP sent emissaries to the tribal chiefs and dignitaries urging them to support the regime.

29 Տեղեկագիր Համարատթեան, 1912–1914 [*Audit of the accounts, 1912–1914*] (Constantinople: Patriarchate, 1914), p. 101 *ff*, for an idea of this type of ineffective procedure.

particular the churches and monasteries, had been acquired or built well before the Ottoman conquest, between the ffth and the fourteenth centuries. This was not enough to satisfy the authorities. A bargain was even proposed: the government offcials offered to draw up legal property deeds if the Armenians would agree to pay taxes on these domains usually exempt because they came under the law on assets belonging to religious institutions.30

In an attempt to circumvent this harassment, the Armenian offcials turned to the Grand Vizier. To bolster their dossier, a special Commission, elected by the Chamber, examined and analyzed the 135 volumes of petitions registered between 1890 and 1910, reporting 7,000 cases of spoliation in thirty-two departments (*sancak*) in Ottoman Armenia,31 and published a four-volume summary.32 It appeared that national assets and private property were appropriated without distinction; that examination of the petitions revealed a systematic policy aimed at depriving the Armenians of farmland; that the local government offcials collaborated in this either by closing their eyes to the brutality with which such operations were carried out or by directly participating in the expropriations by means of all manner of legal devices; that not only lands were targeted for confscation but also houses, buildings, shops, and mills; that the state itself did not hesitate to evict Christians from their homes and to install Circassians or Kurds; that in some cases a whole village was forcefully expropriated and its population's assets confscated; or that Kurdish beys took over monasteries for their headquarters; that often the owner of a feld continued to pay the tax on it even though he could no longer work it; that many felds on which the farmer had had usufructuary rights for generations without possessing an actual deed had been registered in the name of local potentates.

The Commission counted no fewer than thirteen different methods of expropriation, confscation or spoliation. They admitted that they could see no serious way of fghting these abuses insofar as the authorities did not apply the law and no trial had ever resulted in a conviction. Nevertheless some progress could be seen in the adoption of the decree-law of 1913,

30 *Ibidem*, pp. 101–102.

31 Տեղեկագիր Հողային Գրաւմանց Յանձնաժողովոյ [*Report of the Commission on Spoliated Lands*], t. I (Constantinople: Patriarchate, 1910), p. 3. The commission was established 16 November 1909.

32 *Ibidem*, 1910–1912.