Referring to notes from the personal diary of Russian General L. 
Odishe Liyetze on the Turkish front, he wrote,

"On the nights 11-12 March, 1918 alone Armenian butchers 
 bayoneted and axed to death 3000 Muslims in areas surrounding
 Erzincan. These barbars threw their victims into pits, most
 likely dug according to their sinister plans to extinguish 
 Muslims, in groups of 80. My adjutant counted and unearthed
 200 such pits. This is an act against our world of civilization."

On March 12, 1918 Lieut-colonel Griyaznof wrote (from an official
Russian account of the Turkish genocide),

"Roads leading to villages were littered with bayoneted torsos,
 dismembered joints and carved out organs of Muslim peasants...
 alas! mainly of women and children."

Source: Doc. Dr. Azmi Suslu, "Russian View on the Atrocities Committed
        by the Armenians Against the Turks," Ankara Universitesi, Ankara,
        1987, pp. 45-53.
        "Document No: 77," Archive No: 1-2, Cabin No: 10, Drawer 
        No: 4, File No: 410, Section No: 1578, Contents No: 1-12, 1-18.
        (Acting Commander of Erzurum and Deveboynu regions and Commander
        of the Second Erzurum Artillery Regiment Prisoner of War,
        Lieutenant Colonel Toverdodleyov)

"The things I have heard and seen during the two months, until the
 liberation of Erzurum by the Turks, have surpassed all the
 allegations concerning the vicious, degenerate characteristic of
 the Armenians. During the Russian occupation of Erzurum, no Armenian
 was permitted to approach the city and its environs.

 While the Commander of the First Army Corps, General Kaltiyin remained
 in power, troops including Armenian enlisted men, were not sent to the
 area. When the security measures were lifted, the Armenians began to 
 attack Erzurum and its surroundings. Following the attacks came the
 plundering of the houses in the city and the villages and the murder
 of the owners of these houses...Plundering was widely committed by
 the soldiers. This plunder was mainly committed by Armenian soldiers
 who had remained in the rear during the war.

 One day, while passing through the streets on horseback, a group of
 soldiers including an Armenian soldier began to drag two old men of
 seventy years in a certain direction. The roads were covered with mud,
 and these people were dragging the two helpless Turks through the mud
 and dirt...

 It was understood later that all these were nothing but tricks and
 traps. The Turks who joined the gendarmarie soon changed their minds
 and withdrew. The reason was that most of the Turks who were on night
 patrol did not return, and no one knew what had happened to them. The 
 Turks who had been sent outside the city for labour began to disappear
 also. Finally, the Court Martial which had been established for the
 trials of murderers and plunderers, began to liquidate itself for
 fear that they themselves would be punished. The incidents of murder
 and rape, which had decreased, began to occur more frequently.

 Sometime in January and February, a leading Turkish citizen Haci Bekir
 Efendi from Erzurum, was killed one night at his home. The Commander
 in Chief (Odiselidge) gave orders to find murderers within three days.
 The Commander in Chief has bitterly reminded the Armenian intellectuals
 that disobedience among the Armenian enlisted men had reached its
 highest point, that they had insulted and robbed the people and half
 of the Turks sent outside the city had not returned.

 ...We learnt the details this incident from the Commander-in-Chief,
 Odishelidge. They were as follows:

 The killings were organized by the doctors and the employers, and the
 act of killing was committed solely by the Armenian renegades...
 More than eight hundred unarmed and defenceless Turks have been
 killed in Erzincan. Large holes were dug and the defenceless 
 Turks were slaughtered like animals next to the holes. Later, the
 murdered Turks were thrown into the holes. The Armenian who stood 
 near the hole would say when the hole was filled with the corpses:
 'Seventy dead bodies, well, this hole can take ten more.' Thus ten
 more Turks would be cut into pieces, thrown into the hole, and when
 the hole was full it would be covered over with soil.

 The Armenians responsible for the act of murdering would frequently
 fill a house with eighty Turks, and cut their heads off one by one.
 Following the Erzincan massacre, the Armenians began to withdraw
 towards Erzurum... The Armenian renegades among those who withdrew
 to Erzurum from Erzincan raided the Moslem villages on the road, and
 destroyed the entire population, together with the villages.

 During the transportation of the cannons, ammunition and the carriages
 that were outside the war area, certain people were hired among the 
 Kurdish population to conduct the horse carriages. While the travellers
 were passing through Erzurum, the Armenians took advantage of the time
 when the Russian soldiers were in their dwellings and began to kill
 the Kurds they had hired. When the Russian soldiers heard the cries
 of the dying Kurds, they attempted to help them. However, the 
 Armenians threatened the Russian soldiers by vowing that they would
 have the same fate if they intervened, and thus prevented them from
 acting. All these terrifying acts of slaughter were committed with
 hatred and loathing.

 Lieutenant Medivani from the Russian Army described an incident that
 he witnessed in Erzurum as follows: An Armenian had shot a Kurd. The
 Kurd fell down but did not die. The Armenian attempted to force the
 stick in his hand into the mouth of the dying Kurd. However, since
 the Kurd had firmly closed his jaws in his agony, the Armenian failed
 in his attempt. Having seen this, the Armenian ripped open the abdomen
 of the Kurd, disembowelled him, and finally killed him by stamping
 him with the iron heel of his boot.

 Odishelidge himself told us that all the Turks who could not escape
 from the village of Ilica were killed. Their heads had been cut off
 by axes. He also told us that he had seen thousands of murdered
 children. Lieutenant Colonel Gryaznov, who passed through the village
 of Ilica, three weeks after the massacre told us the following:

 There were thousands of dead bodies hacked to pieces, on the roads.
 Every Armenian who happened to pass through these roads, cursed and
 spat on the corpses. In the courtyard of a mosque which was about
 25x30 meter square, dead bodies were piled to a height of 140 
 centimeters. Among these corpses were men and women of every age,
 children and old people. The women's bodies had obvious marks of
 rape. The genitals of many girls were filled with gun-powder.

 A few educated Armenian girls, who worked as telephone operators
 for the Armenian troops were called by Lieutenant Colonel Gryaznov
 to the courtyard of the mosque and he bitterly told them to be 
 proud of what the Armenians had done. To the lieutenant colonel's
 disgusted amazement, the Armenian girls started to laugh and giggle,
 instead of being horrified. The lieutenant colonel had severely
 reprimanded those girls for their indecent behaviour. When he told
 the girls that the Armenians, including women, were generally more
 licentious than even the wildest animals, and that their indecent
 and shameful laughter was the most obvious evidence of their inhumanity
 and barbarity, before a scene that appalled even veteran soldiers,
 the Armenian girls finally remembered their sense of shame and
 claimed they had laughed because they were nervous.

 An Armenian contractor at the Alaca Communication zone command
 narrated the following incident which took place on February 20:

 The Armenians had nailed a Turkish women to the wall. They had cut
 out the women's heart and placed the heart on top of her head.
 The great massacre in Erzurum began on February 7... The enlisted men 
 of the artillery division caught and stripped 270 people. Then they
 took these people into the bath to satisfy their lusts. 100 people
 among this group were able to save their lives as the result of
 my decisive attempts. The others, the Armenians claimed, were 
 released when they learnt that I understood what was going on. 
 Among those who organized this treacherous act was the envoy to the
 Armenian officers, Karagodaviev. Today, some Turks were murdered
 on the streets.

 On February 12, some Armenians have shot more than ten innocent
 Moslems. The Russian soldiers who attempted to save these people were
 threatened with death. Meanwhile I imprisoned an Armenian for
 murdering an innocent Turk. 

 When an Armenian officer told an Armenian murderer that he would 
 be hanged for his crime, the killer shouted furiously: 'How dare
 you hang an Armenian for killing a Turk?' In Erzurum, the 
 Armenians burned down the Turkish market. On February 17, I heard
 that the entire population of Tepekoy village, situated within
 the artillery area, had been totally annihilated. On the same 
 day when Antranik entered Erzurum, I reported the massacre to
 him, and asked him to track down the perpetrators of this horrible
 act. However no result was achieved.

 In the villages whose inhabitants had been massacred, there was a
 natural silence. On the night of 26/27 February, the Armenians deceived
 the Russians, perpetrated a massacre and escaped for fear of the 
 Turkish soldiers. Later, it was understood that this massacre had
 been based upon a method organized and planned in a circular. 
 The population had been herded in a certain place and then killed
 one by one. The number of murders committed on that night reached
 three thousand. It was the Armenians who bragged to about the details
 of the massacre. The Armenians fighting against the Turkish soldiers
 were so few in number and so cowardly that they could not even
 withstand the Turkish soldiers who consisted of only five hundred
 people and two cannons, for one night, and ran away. The leading
 Armenians of the community could have prevented this massacre.
 However, the Armenian intellectuals had shared the same ideas with
 the renegades in this massacre, just as in all the others. The lower
 classes within the Armenian community have always obeyed the orders
 of the leading Armenian figures and commanders. 

 I do not like to give the impression that all Armenian intellectuals
 were accessories to these murders. No, for there were people who
 opposed the Armenians for such actions, since they understood that
 it would yield no result. However, such people were only a minority.
 Furthermore, such people were considered as traitors to the Armenian
 cause. Some have seemingly opposed the Armenian murders but have
 supported the massacres secretly. Some, on the other hand, preferred
 to remain silent. There were certain others, who, when accused by
 the Russians of infamy, would say the following: 'You are Russians.
 You can never understand the Armenian cause.' The Armenians had a
 conscience. They would commit massacres and then would flee in fear
 of the Turkish soldiers."


Serdar Argic