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The View from the Roofs of Mardin: What Everyone Saw in the `Year of the Sword'
By David Gaunt on January 7, 2015 in Featured, Headline, Special Reports
This article will appear in the Armenian Weekly's upcoming magazine on
Ottoman genocides, co-edited by Khatchig Mouradian (coordinator,
Armenian Genocide Program, CGHR, Rutgers University) and Sabri Atman
(director, Seyfo Center`the Assyrian Genocide Research Center).
Mardin is an ancient and beautiful city, built on the steep slope of a
mountain that descends from the fortress on top. Houses were literally
built on top of each other, with one family's roof becoming another
family's terrace. It's a very well-ordered form of residential chaos
that evolved over the centuries and withstands mordernization. Because
of the height of the mountain, people living in Mardin can see for
many miles around'far into the surrounding plains, far along the main
road to Diyarbakir, sometimes even as far as the Syrian border.
Mardin (Source: Michel Paboudjian collection, Paris). For more photos,
see http://www.houshamadyan.org/en/mapottomanempire/vilayetdiyarbekir.html
Because of this building pattern, Mardin was also an open-air theater
that provided residents with an outstanding view of major events that
ripped through the small city in World War I. Although Mardin was far
from the frontline, large elements of its population were harassed,
deported, imprisoned, tortured, paraded through the streets, and
massacred. Residents could also see the caravans of deportees coming
from the northern provinces, who were marched past the city on their
way to Der Zor. The horrors that took place were observed by many.
Some perhaps enjoyed them like the spectators of Roman gladiator
fights; others saw it as the wrath of God punishing His people for
some collective sin; still others saw it as the murdering of innocent
citizens falsely accused of treason and of plotting revolt. A great
number of observers saw the terror as a historical moment that forever
shattered the traditional, subtle and balanced multi-religious,
multiethnic pattern of life that had evolved in Mardin. Some called it
nakabat, the Arabic word for catastrophe; some called itfirman,
believing it was decreed by the sultan; and some called it qafle, the
Syriac word for massacre. But generally it is now known as seyfo, a
general term used in many Middle Eastern languages for sword, as in
`1915 the year of the sword.'1
We know of the chronicles, diaries, and annotations of various people
who were residing in Mardin in 1914-15 and who described the reign of
terror that was instigated by mutasarrif (local governor) Bedri Bey,
police chief Memduh, and others beginning in June 1915.2 Some of the
writers are only known by their initials, such as A.H.B., A.Y.B., and
P.V.M.; others published their books anonymously, like Ishaq Armale,
who had fled to Lebanon. In some cases, the writings lay unpublished
for decades after they were first written down, like those of the
French Dominican monks Jacques Rhétoré (whose manuscript was
discovered in Mosul after the first Gulf War), Hyacinthe Simone, and
Marie-Dominque Berré. A few, like the diary of the American Alpheus
Andrus, are still known only in manuscript form.3 These writings are
likely just the tip of the iceberg; many other chronicles were
probably written, but have disappeared or remain undiscovered. One
person that we know wrote a manuscript that has been lost is the
Catholic priest Joseph Tfinkji. His manuscript presumably contained a
great deal of information about the Armenians and Syriacs who escaped
from Mardin and were given asylum by the Yezidis in the Sinjar
Mountains, as he served as the priest there. At any rate, Mardin is
the one place in the Ottoman Empire that provides us with a relatively
complete day-by-day description of the persecution of the Armenians,
Chaldeans, and Syriacs.
I shall now analyze a few observations from the many eye-witness
accounts available. Most are taken from the very detailed descriptions
by Armele and Rhétoré. Their usual point of observation was from the
terrace of the building that now houses the Mardin museum, but was
then the Syriac Catholic patriarchy. But on the morning of July 4,
1915, Armale was outside the city walls taking a walk on the small
hills just beyond the western gate. He is broken off from admiring the
trees bearing wonderful fruit by a terrible scene:
`What is that I see over at Ã-mer Agha's water spring? A great caravan
advances like a herd of sheep or cows. I must take up my telescope and
look! An enormous army of close to 10,000 people! Most of them are
women and children. There are some elderly too. I see soldiers who
escort them, but beat them and kick them. They try to flee. Above them
rifle barrels appear. My ears hear shots. I see a group that is
surrounded by some soldiers. I see them brutally drive them toward a
fort. Oh God! Where to? To the water well, just like during the latest
weeks! They take off their clothes, pull out knives, and attack them,
stabbing them and throwing them down headfirst into the well. And so
they go back [to the caravan]. What an atrocity! ¦
`They come nearer in groups like grasshoppers and they must be about
8,000. How strange! A short while before they looked like 10,000.
Where are the others? Can these murderers have killed 2,000 in 3
hours? How many were they when they left their homes? They must have
been many more. I heard a few days ago that they amounted to 50,000.
They come from Erzurum, Lice, Harput, and other Armenian cities¦
`The leaders of Mardin with their graying hair have arrived [to where
I stand]. They sit on horseback and watch how women and children rush
about in panic. Their faces show amusement. In their heads are greed
and immoral thoughts. They spur on their horses and ride towards the
water spring. Some get there first in order to steal and plunder. I
watch out so they don't attack me. I better hide under a tree. ¦
`I see wealthy Muslims with their wives pushing their way through the
weeping and sorrowful Christians. They are out to get people. They
choose and select among the women and children, especially among the
girls. And they demand that they renounce their religion. ¦ The
wealthy Mardin women manage to get a hold of a large number of boys
and girls, and the soldiers don't object; rather, they invite it. I
see some persons return with their catch. Some lead boys from their
horses, others have caught girls whom they veil so that the
kidnapper's friends cannot see them and begin to quarrel. One man has
filled his pockets with gold and silver and returns laughing. ¦ Others
converse happily on their way back and cannot hide their joy over the
goods they have gotten in such a short time. ¦ The soldiers have
resumed their harassment of the Armenians, and hit and kick them
badly. They force their prisoners forward in the heat of the
afternoon.'4
What Armale witnessed was the total brutalization of the Muslim
civilian population following weeks of human caravans being sent
through their neighborhood. He saw how the local people were invited
by the escort to steal and kidnap. He saw how many participated in the
plunder. The deportations and massacres had by this point been going
on for a month, and had clearly made the locals nearly immune to the
fate of the Christians. This was a far cry from the good
neighborliness that was a part of traditional Mardin life. Many of
Mardin's Armenians and Syriacs would never have imagined that their
neighbors could turn on them. They expected instead to be protected,
as had happened in 1895 when local urban Muslim clans, the Mishkeviye
and Mandalkaniye, beat off an external attack.
Armale recounts the Armenians' reaction to the first reliable
information on plans to eliminate them. `Some leading Muslims employed
Christian servants, who by hiding listened to what was said and told
of the secrets. We did not believe them and said, `Our friendship with
the Muslims is purer than the eye of a rooster and stronger than iron.
It would be impossible to turn such a friendship into hostility and
mildness into harshness, because we have no conflicts with each
other.' We added that in our area, there were no hundred percent
Armenians or opponents to the government. No, we are, praise God,
Catholics and loyal to the state and follow its decisions to the
letter of the law. Therefore, it has no reason to harass us and claim
that we are hostile and plot treason. ¦ But we were disappointed. The
truest friend and the dearest comrade became the worst and most
distrustful enemy. The sheep became wolves and the doves became
snakes.' Here, we can see a remarkable aspect of most
genocides'namely, that people who are normally peaceful and
trustworthy can change into violent and brutal people. They
participate in actions they would otherwise'before, and even
later'consider as immoral and impossible.
An absolutely essential step in creating a climate that permits
immoral acts has to do with the activities of the leading
personalities in the community. Some aspects have to do with
dehumanizing the victims, describing them as creatures no longer
human. The vali (provincial governor) in Diyarbakir did this by
viewing the Armenians as bacteria. But other aspects have to do with
preparing the population through propaganda and disinformation; and
for this, the propaganda must come from a level of authority. In
Mardin, we can see a total shift among the leadership. Up until early
June, the mutasarrif of Mardin was a humane official by the name of
Hilmi Bey. Hilmi went out of his way to maintain balance among the
Muslim and Christian communities. He showed great kindness towards the
Armenian archbishop Ignace Maloyan and managed to persuade the sultan
to grant Maloyan a gold medal in April 1915. Even Hilmi's predecessor,
Shefik Bey, took honor in treating the Christians as full Ottoman
citizens. Hilmi refused to follow vali Reshid Bey's orders to arrest
the leading Christians. He is reported to have said, `I see no reason
to need to arrest Mardin's Christians. So I cannot agree to your
demand.' Shefik sent the following message to the Syrian Catholic
archbishop Gabriel Tappuni: `I have some papers with an order to
deport and kill you. But I know they are falsified and have no
grounds. As proof of my friendship to you, I have written to the vali
and sworn my oath of your upright loyalty to the state.' Several other
Ottoman officials also refused. For this, Hilmi was demoted and
transferred to Iraq; some of the lesser officials were assassinated on
the orders of the vali. In their place came new persons from the
outside ready to organize the murders and deportations. Most important
was the previously named Bedri Bey, the vice vali; Memduh, the
provincial police chief; Tevfik, the adjutant of the vali; and Harun,
the commander of the provincial gendarmerie. They found a few Mardin
residents who were willing to collaborate with the criminal court
judge Halil Adib, and together collected a volunteer militia that the
locals called Al Khamsin (the fiftymen).
There was one very big problem that the organizers of the genocide had
to confront: Mardin's Muslim leaders had a long-standing tradition of
protecting the Christians. In the Hamidiye massacres of 1895, the
Mandalkiye and Mishkiye tribes had banded together to protect the city
from a well-organized assembly of enemies who sought to massacre the
Armenians. The Milli Kurdish confederation under Ibrahim Pasha was
also famous for its protection of Christians at that time. Therefore,
the provincial government officials had to make every effort to get
the Milli, the Mandalkiye, the Miskiye, and other tribes to break with
their pro-Christian past and join the government's plans. This was
done in May 1915, prior to the major arrests by night time meetings
with fanatic anti-Christian propagandists, like Zeki Licevi and his
brother Said. On the political level the Ittihadist National Assembly
member Feyzi arrived from Diyarbakir and according to Armale said,
`Let no Christian remain! He who does not do this duty is no longer a
Muslim.' On May 15, a large meeting was held under Feyzi's leadership
with local members of the Ittihad ve Terraki party, some of the
leading administrators, a doctor, a mufti, three shayks, as well as
aghas from the Dashkiye, Mandalkiye, and Miskiye tribes. Feyzi,
according to Rhétoré, provoked those who expressed a lack of interest
in killing the Christians. `You surprise me. What is holding you back?
Is it the fear of one day having to pay for this? But what happened to
those who killed Armenians in Abdul Hamid's time? Today Germany is
with us and our enemies are its enemies. This will surely give us
victory in this war, and we won't have to answer to anyone. Let us get
rid of the Christians so we can be masters in our own house. This is
what the government wants.' The men at the meeting were required to
sign a petition that the Christians were traitors and had to be
disposed of. Even those who were not enthusiastic signed the petition,
so as not to be different from the others. In this way, they became
the core of the planning for the elimination of Mardin's Christian
residents and met repeatedly to make plans. The involvement in the
genocide of the Christians' once-traditional protectors was thus
secured.
All of these preparations were necessary for the swift elimination of
the Armenians and of those Syriacs who were Catholic or Protestant. It
seems that there was a local agreement that Mardin's Syrian Orthodox
Christians (the `orphans of Muhammad') would be spared. According to
Rhétoré, the city of Mardin in this period had a Christian population
of 6,500 Armenians; 1,100 Chaldeans; 1,750 Catholic Syriacs; 7,000
Syriac Orthodox; and 125 Protestants. In the entire Mardin sanjak,
there were nearly 75,000 Christians of all denominations. During the
massacres nearly 48,000'or 64 percent'disappeared, and this includes
the rural Syriac Orthodox population that was not part of the agreed
exclusion.
Perhaps the most horrifying scene witnessed by the Mardin residents
was the sending away of the first transport of Christian prisoners on
June 10, 1915. Mardin's Christian elite, which amounted to more than
400 adult men, had been imprisoned during the past week on trumped-up
charges of planning a revolt, and hiding weapons and bombs. Many had
been tortured into giving false confessions. But on the night of June
10, a ghastly spectacle was arranged, intended to terrify the
population and break the possibility of any resistance.
`At the fall of darkness, Mardin residents could see soldiers going up
to the fort and then returning to the prison. They carried iron rings,
chains, and thick ropes. They called out the names of the prisoners
one by one, and they tied them with ropes so that they could not flee¦
Then those who were thought to be Armenians were taken from the
others. Rings were pressed around their necks and chains around their
wrists. In this way they were bound, drawn, and chained for several
hours¦ After having arranged the men in rows, they forced them out
through the prison gates. Above them weapons and swords shined. The
prisoners were kept totally silent. And a town crier cried out, `The
Christian residents who leave their houses will be amputated and put
together with their co-religionists.' Then they trudged along the main
street 417 priests and other men. Young and old, Armenians, [Catholic]
Syricas, Chaldeans, and Protestants.
`When they passed the Muslim quarter, the women came out and joked.
They insulted the prisoners. Children threw stones. When the prisoners
came to the Christian quarter, the residents could not go out to talk
or say farewell. Many stood by the railings on their roofs and wept,
praying to God. ¦ The Christians shuffled in silence like pupils on
their way to school. They made no sound. ¦ When they came to the
western city gate, those monks that were still free and the American
missionaries went out on the roofs to see their friends for the last
time and say farewell. They found them in a tragic state, so that
blood could clot in their veins and terror hold them in its grip.
There could not have been anything more difficult for the eye to see
or more painful for the heart than standing there and looking down on
the many chained co-religionists. Every time anyone cast a glance at
that street, he would be reminded of the noble archbishop, the
venerable priests, and the march of the dear Christians.'
In the front marched the police chief Memduh. Many of the 400
prisoners bore the signs of torture and were very weak. Some had
bleeding feet and fingers from nails that had been pulled off; broken
bones; cuts about the head. Some had to be supported by others to walk
at all. Beards had been torn. The chains rattled accentuating the
ghostly silence. And at the end of the procession came the Archbishop
Maloyan, who was handcuffed, barefoot, and limping after bastinado
(foot whipping). All of the men in this first deportation from Mardin
were killed in the night between June 10 and 11'some at Omar Agha's
water spring, some at Sheykhan, some at the ruins of the Zarzavan
fort. Their families in Mardin were told that they had arrived safely
at their destination. No one believed this.
There were few that did not lose a family member that night. This
death march through the center of town was an effective announcement
of the start of a reign of terror. The silent march in clanking chains
through the Muslim and then Christian quarters polarized the
population along religious lines. To all it was obvious that the
government'through the police chief and the soldiers'had targeted the
Armenians; in the case of Mardin, this meant that even the Syriac
Catholics and Protestants were considered to be Armenian by the local
authorities, for they too had been handcuffed and chained like
ordinary criminals. The escorts allowed the Muslim residents to
approach the prisoners and abuse them verbally and physically. Thus,
the local mob came to be an active participant in the scene
orchestrated by the authorities. And it created alliances among the
mob, as they would in the future need to rationalize their actions and
judge them as being moral. They were no longer just bystanders, but
participants, although not of the worst kind.
The Christians that night were confined to their houses and could do
nothing but wave and weep. The procession became a show of the
absolute power of some, and the absolute weakness of the targeted
victims. Knowledge of this death march spread quickly throughout the
Ottoman provinces. In Mosul, the German consul Walter Holstein heard
of it either from Hilmi or Shefik. He informed his ambassador in
Istanbul of the ongoing `general massacre,' who in turn wrote to
Berlin; the German government protested strongly to Talat Pasha, who
was then forced to send a reprimand to the valiof Diyarbakir (who
ignored it).
Witnesses interpreted this targeting of Mardin's Armenians as an
anti-Christian act, and viewed the victims as martyrs of the Christian
faith. There were several local reasons behind this conclusion.
Foremost was that the group of 400 leaders included not just Armenians
of the Catholic Church but also all other Catholics'the Syriacs and
the Chaldeans'and even Protestants. As all groups spoke the local
Arabic dialect and many had Arabic names, the distinguishing feature
of the Armenian language was lacking. The various Catholic groups had
very close relationships; the priests, particularly, met often across
religious lines. Thus, the target group was seen as being constructed
on the grounds of religion, not on Armenian background alone. Second,
the first wave of imprisonments and the death march that followed
included many of the leading religious figures in the city. And they
sustained particularly brutal treatment. Third, almost all of the
witness testimonies came from those who had received religious
education and saw the genocide of 1915 as a repeat of the martyrdom of
the early Christian church in Roman times. They highlighted the choice
given to the prisoners to either convert to Islam or die, and praised
those who chose to die rather than convert. These scenes are told in
great detail. They also emphasized that it was the wrath of God that
struck the army with the typhus epidemic in 1916. The biblical
analogies go back to visions of the Apocalypse, the end of the world,
and the coming of the Last Judgment.
This interpretation, however, makes it difficult to find alternative
motivations behind the genocide. Material, social, and economic causes
play very little role in theses testimonies'with one exception, that
is: Hyacinthe Simon's report. Simon gives a very long list of the vast
sums of money that police chief Memduh and mutasarrif Bedri extorted
or stole from the wealthy Christian families. That he could put
together this long list indicates that the stolen money, jewelry, and
property were common knowledge in Mardin and were discussed widely.
The clergymen who were left in Mardin collected and spent large sums
of money to get their fellow Christians released from prisoners, or to
buy back kidnapped children who were being sold in the marketplace.
Witnesses in Mardin described the step-by-step process of harassment
that led from occasional maltreatment to individual acts of murder,
and finally to full-scale genocide. This process began with the
declaration of mobilization in August 1914. But with the passing of
each month, the feeling of a coming catastrophe grew. Archbishop
Maloyan predicted his murder weeks in advance. In a letter to his
congregation, written on May 1, 1915, he spoke of the decisions made
by the government that would lead either to `extermination or
martyrdom.' Others probably shared the same fears. The evidence
available shows that there was little'arguably infinitesimal'political
agitation that could be used by the government as a pretext for
exterminating the Christian groups. On the contrary, local officials
attested to their loyalty. As has been shown, new officials from the
outside had to be handpicked for their brutality and groomed for the
task of initiating the genocide. After the first death march, more
deportations followed until September 1915, when there were very few
`Armenians' left in place. The instigators and perpetrators had become
very wealthy from the bribes and confiscated property of the victims.
None of the perpetrators were ever put on trial. And there is still no
monument to those officials who tried to save the Armenians.
Let us finish with the words of Jacques Rhétoré, on why he wrote in
such detail of the persecutions of 1915: `The most important thing is
not to let these memories be forgotten. I have written down as well as
I could. I hope the reader will find what I wished to convey, that is
first of all the horror of the terrible crimes that were committed,
with an appeal to God's and people's judgment over those who so turned
against their humanity by ordering and perpetrating them. After that
comes my admiration for the victims, who in such high degree honored
humanity.'
David Gaunt is professor of history at Södertörn University College,
Stockholm, Sweden. He is a social historian who has written widely on
the history of minorities and everyday life. He is the author of
Massacres, Resistance, Protectors: Muslim-Christian Relations in
Eastern Anatolia during World War I, a seminal work on the Assyrian
Genocide.
Notes
1 Shabo Thalay, `Sayfo, Firman, Qafle'Der erste Weltkrieg aus der
Sicht der syrischen Christen,' in Akten des 5. Symposiums zur Sprache,
Geshichte, Theologie und Gegenwartslage der Syriaschen Kirchen, Rainer
Voigt, ed. Berlin 2006, 235-249.
2 Ishaq Armale, Al Qusara fi nakabat al-nasara (Lebanon 1919); Jacques
Rhétoré, `Les Chrétiens aux bêtes: Souvenirs de la guerre sainte
proclamée par les Turcs contre les chrétiens en 1915' (Paris: Cerf
2005); Hyacinthe Simon, `Mardine la ville heroique: Autel et tombeau
de l'Arménie durant les massacres de 1915' (Jounieh, Lebanon: 1991);
Marie-Dominque Berré, `Massacres de Mardin,' in Haigazian
Armenological Journal 17 (1997) 81-106; A. H. B., `Mémoires sur
Mardine 1915,' in Studia Orientalia Christiana Collectanea (Cairo)
29-30 (1998) 59-189; Vincent Mistrih, `Mémoires de A. Y. B. sur les
massacres de Mardine,' in Armenian Perspectives: 10th Anniversary
Conference of the Association International des Etudes Arméniennes,
Ed. Nicholas Awde (London 1997) 287-292; P. V. M., `Autre documents
sur les événements de Mardine,' Studia Orientalia Christiana
Collectanea 29 (1998) 33-77; Ara Sarafian, Ed., `The Disasters of
Mardin during the Persecutions of the Christians, Especially the
Armenians, 1915' in Haigazian Armenological Review 18 (1998) 261-271;
Abed Mschiho Na'man Qarabash, `Vergossenes Blut: Geschichten der
Gruel, die an den Christen in Tűrkei verűbt, und der Leiden, die ihnen
1895 und 1914-1918 zugefűgt wurden' (Glane, Holland 1997).
3 Houghton Library, Harvard University.
4 Armale, 255.
http://armenianweekly.com/2015/01/07/mardin/
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
By David Gaunt on January 7, 2015 in Featured, Headline, Special Reports
This article will appear in the Armenian Weekly's upcoming magazine on
Ottoman genocides, co-edited by Khatchig Mouradian (coordinator,
Armenian Genocide Program, CGHR, Rutgers University) and Sabri Atman
(director, Seyfo Center`the Assyrian Genocide Research Center).
Mardin is an ancient and beautiful city, built on the steep slope of a
mountain that descends from the fortress on top. Houses were literally
built on top of each other, with one family's roof becoming another
family's terrace. It's a very well-ordered form of residential chaos
that evolved over the centuries and withstands mordernization. Because
of the height of the mountain, people living in Mardin can see for
many miles around'far into the surrounding plains, far along the main
road to Diyarbakir, sometimes even as far as the Syrian border.
Mardin (Source: Michel Paboudjian collection, Paris). For more photos,
see http://www.houshamadyan.org/en/mapottomanempire/vilayetdiyarbekir.html
Because of this building pattern, Mardin was also an open-air theater
that provided residents with an outstanding view of major events that
ripped through the small city in World War I. Although Mardin was far
from the frontline, large elements of its population were harassed,
deported, imprisoned, tortured, paraded through the streets, and
massacred. Residents could also see the caravans of deportees coming
from the northern provinces, who were marched past the city on their
way to Der Zor. The horrors that took place were observed by many.
Some perhaps enjoyed them like the spectators of Roman gladiator
fights; others saw it as the wrath of God punishing His people for
some collective sin; still others saw it as the murdering of innocent
citizens falsely accused of treason and of plotting revolt. A great
number of observers saw the terror as a historical moment that forever
shattered the traditional, subtle and balanced multi-religious,
multiethnic pattern of life that had evolved in Mardin. Some called it
nakabat, the Arabic word for catastrophe; some called itfirman,
believing it was decreed by the sultan; and some called it qafle, the
Syriac word for massacre. But generally it is now known as seyfo, a
general term used in many Middle Eastern languages for sword, as in
`1915 the year of the sword.'1
We know of the chronicles, diaries, and annotations of various people
who were residing in Mardin in 1914-15 and who described the reign of
terror that was instigated by mutasarrif (local governor) Bedri Bey,
police chief Memduh, and others beginning in June 1915.2 Some of the
writers are only known by their initials, such as A.H.B., A.Y.B., and
P.V.M.; others published their books anonymously, like Ishaq Armale,
who had fled to Lebanon. In some cases, the writings lay unpublished
for decades after they were first written down, like those of the
French Dominican monks Jacques Rhétoré (whose manuscript was
discovered in Mosul after the first Gulf War), Hyacinthe Simone, and
Marie-Dominque Berré. A few, like the diary of the American Alpheus
Andrus, are still known only in manuscript form.3 These writings are
likely just the tip of the iceberg; many other chronicles were
probably written, but have disappeared or remain undiscovered. One
person that we know wrote a manuscript that has been lost is the
Catholic priest Joseph Tfinkji. His manuscript presumably contained a
great deal of information about the Armenians and Syriacs who escaped
from Mardin and were given asylum by the Yezidis in the Sinjar
Mountains, as he served as the priest there. At any rate, Mardin is
the one place in the Ottoman Empire that provides us with a relatively
complete day-by-day description of the persecution of the Armenians,
Chaldeans, and Syriacs.
I shall now analyze a few observations from the many eye-witness
accounts available. Most are taken from the very detailed descriptions
by Armele and Rhétoré. Their usual point of observation was from the
terrace of the building that now houses the Mardin museum, but was
then the Syriac Catholic patriarchy. But on the morning of July 4,
1915, Armale was outside the city walls taking a walk on the small
hills just beyond the western gate. He is broken off from admiring the
trees bearing wonderful fruit by a terrible scene:
`What is that I see over at Ã-mer Agha's water spring? A great caravan
advances like a herd of sheep or cows. I must take up my telescope and
look! An enormous army of close to 10,000 people! Most of them are
women and children. There are some elderly too. I see soldiers who
escort them, but beat them and kick them. They try to flee. Above them
rifle barrels appear. My ears hear shots. I see a group that is
surrounded by some soldiers. I see them brutally drive them toward a
fort. Oh God! Where to? To the water well, just like during the latest
weeks! They take off their clothes, pull out knives, and attack them,
stabbing them and throwing them down headfirst into the well. And so
they go back [to the caravan]. What an atrocity! ¦
`They come nearer in groups like grasshoppers and they must be about
8,000. How strange! A short while before they looked like 10,000.
Where are the others? Can these murderers have killed 2,000 in 3
hours? How many were they when they left their homes? They must have
been many more. I heard a few days ago that they amounted to 50,000.
They come from Erzurum, Lice, Harput, and other Armenian cities¦
`The leaders of Mardin with their graying hair have arrived [to where
I stand]. They sit on horseback and watch how women and children rush
about in panic. Their faces show amusement. In their heads are greed
and immoral thoughts. They spur on their horses and ride towards the
water spring. Some get there first in order to steal and plunder. I
watch out so they don't attack me. I better hide under a tree. ¦
`I see wealthy Muslims with their wives pushing their way through the
weeping and sorrowful Christians. They are out to get people. They
choose and select among the women and children, especially among the
girls. And they demand that they renounce their religion. ¦ The
wealthy Mardin women manage to get a hold of a large number of boys
and girls, and the soldiers don't object; rather, they invite it. I
see some persons return with their catch. Some lead boys from their
horses, others have caught girls whom they veil so that the
kidnapper's friends cannot see them and begin to quarrel. One man has
filled his pockets with gold and silver and returns laughing. ¦ Others
converse happily on their way back and cannot hide their joy over the
goods they have gotten in such a short time. ¦ The soldiers have
resumed their harassment of the Armenians, and hit and kick them
badly. They force their prisoners forward in the heat of the
afternoon.'4
What Armale witnessed was the total brutalization of the Muslim
civilian population following weeks of human caravans being sent
through their neighborhood. He saw how the local people were invited
by the escort to steal and kidnap. He saw how many participated in the
plunder. The deportations and massacres had by this point been going
on for a month, and had clearly made the locals nearly immune to the
fate of the Christians. This was a far cry from the good
neighborliness that was a part of traditional Mardin life. Many of
Mardin's Armenians and Syriacs would never have imagined that their
neighbors could turn on them. They expected instead to be protected,
as had happened in 1895 when local urban Muslim clans, the Mishkeviye
and Mandalkaniye, beat off an external attack.
Armale recounts the Armenians' reaction to the first reliable
information on plans to eliminate them. `Some leading Muslims employed
Christian servants, who by hiding listened to what was said and told
of the secrets. We did not believe them and said, `Our friendship with
the Muslims is purer than the eye of a rooster and stronger than iron.
It would be impossible to turn such a friendship into hostility and
mildness into harshness, because we have no conflicts with each
other.' We added that in our area, there were no hundred percent
Armenians or opponents to the government. No, we are, praise God,
Catholics and loyal to the state and follow its decisions to the
letter of the law. Therefore, it has no reason to harass us and claim
that we are hostile and plot treason. ¦ But we were disappointed. The
truest friend and the dearest comrade became the worst and most
distrustful enemy. The sheep became wolves and the doves became
snakes.' Here, we can see a remarkable aspect of most
genocides'namely, that people who are normally peaceful and
trustworthy can change into violent and brutal people. They
participate in actions they would otherwise'before, and even
later'consider as immoral and impossible.
An absolutely essential step in creating a climate that permits
immoral acts has to do with the activities of the leading
personalities in the community. Some aspects have to do with
dehumanizing the victims, describing them as creatures no longer
human. The vali (provincial governor) in Diyarbakir did this by
viewing the Armenians as bacteria. But other aspects have to do with
preparing the population through propaganda and disinformation; and
for this, the propaganda must come from a level of authority. In
Mardin, we can see a total shift among the leadership. Up until early
June, the mutasarrif of Mardin was a humane official by the name of
Hilmi Bey. Hilmi went out of his way to maintain balance among the
Muslim and Christian communities. He showed great kindness towards the
Armenian archbishop Ignace Maloyan and managed to persuade the sultan
to grant Maloyan a gold medal in April 1915. Even Hilmi's predecessor,
Shefik Bey, took honor in treating the Christians as full Ottoman
citizens. Hilmi refused to follow vali Reshid Bey's orders to arrest
the leading Christians. He is reported to have said, `I see no reason
to need to arrest Mardin's Christians. So I cannot agree to your
demand.' Shefik sent the following message to the Syrian Catholic
archbishop Gabriel Tappuni: `I have some papers with an order to
deport and kill you. But I know they are falsified and have no
grounds. As proof of my friendship to you, I have written to the vali
and sworn my oath of your upright loyalty to the state.' Several other
Ottoman officials also refused. For this, Hilmi was demoted and
transferred to Iraq; some of the lesser officials were assassinated on
the orders of the vali. In their place came new persons from the
outside ready to organize the murders and deportations. Most important
was the previously named Bedri Bey, the vice vali; Memduh, the
provincial police chief; Tevfik, the adjutant of the vali; and Harun,
the commander of the provincial gendarmerie. They found a few Mardin
residents who were willing to collaborate with the criminal court
judge Halil Adib, and together collected a volunteer militia that the
locals called Al Khamsin (the fiftymen).
There was one very big problem that the organizers of the genocide had
to confront: Mardin's Muslim leaders had a long-standing tradition of
protecting the Christians. In the Hamidiye massacres of 1895, the
Mandalkiye and Mishkiye tribes had banded together to protect the city
from a well-organized assembly of enemies who sought to massacre the
Armenians. The Milli Kurdish confederation under Ibrahim Pasha was
also famous for its protection of Christians at that time. Therefore,
the provincial government officials had to make every effort to get
the Milli, the Mandalkiye, the Miskiye, and other tribes to break with
their pro-Christian past and join the government's plans. This was
done in May 1915, prior to the major arrests by night time meetings
with fanatic anti-Christian propagandists, like Zeki Licevi and his
brother Said. On the political level the Ittihadist National Assembly
member Feyzi arrived from Diyarbakir and according to Armale said,
`Let no Christian remain! He who does not do this duty is no longer a
Muslim.' On May 15, a large meeting was held under Feyzi's leadership
with local members of the Ittihad ve Terraki party, some of the
leading administrators, a doctor, a mufti, three shayks, as well as
aghas from the Dashkiye, Mandalkiye, and Miskiye tribes. Feyzi,
according to Rhétoré, provoked those who expressed a lack of interest
in killing the Christians. `You surprise me. What is holding you back?
Is it the fear of one day having to pay for this? But what happened to
those who killed Armenians in Abdul Hamid's time? Today Germany is
with us and our enemies are its enemies. This will surely give us
victory in this war, and we won't have to answer to anyone. Let us get
rid of the Christians so we can be masters in our own house. This is
what the government wants.' The men at the meeting were required to
sign a petition that the Christians were traitors and had to be
disposed of. Even those who were not enthusiastic signed the petition,
so as not to be different from the others. In this way, they became
the core of the planning for the elimination of Mardin's Christian
residents and met repeatedly to make plans. The involvement in the
genocide of the Christians' once-traditional protectors was thus
secured.
All of these preparations were necessary for the swift elimination of
the Armenians and of those Syriacs who were Catholic or Protestant. It
seems that there was a local agreement that Mardin's Syrian Orthodox
Christians (the `orphans of Muhammad') would be spared. According to
Rhétoré, the city of Mardin in this period had a Christian population
of 6,500 Armenians; 1,100 Chaldeans; 1,750 Catholic Syriacs; 7,000
Syriac Orthodox; and 125 Protestants. In the entire Mardin sanjak,
there were nearly 75,000 Christians of all denominations. During the
massacres nearly 48,000'or 64 percent'disappeared, and this includes
the rural Syriac Orthodox population that was not part of the agreed
exclusion.
Perhaps the most horrifying scene witnessed by the Mardin residents
was the sending away of the first transport of Christian prisoners on
June 10, 1915. Mardin's Christian elite, which amounted to more than
400 adult men, had been imprisoned during the past week on trumped-up
charges of planning a revolt, and hiding weapons and bombs. Many had
been tortured into giving false confessions. But on the night of June
10, a ghastly spectacle was arranged, intended to terrify the
population and break the possibility of any resistance.
`At the fall of darkness, Mardin residents could see soldiers going up
to the fort and then returning to the prison. They carried iron rings,
chains, and thick ropes. They called out the names of the prisoners
one by one, and they tied them with ropes so that they could not flee¦
Then those who were thought to be Armenians were taken from the
others. Rings were pressed around their necks and chains around their
wrists. In this way they were bound, drawn, and chained for several
hours¦ After having arranged the men in rows, they forced them out
through the prison gates. Above them weapons and swords shined. The
prisoners were kept totally silent. And a town crier cried out, `The
Christian residents who leave their houses will be amputated and put
together with their co-religionists.' Then they trudged along the main
street 417 priests and other men. Young and old, Armenians, [Catholic]
Syricas, Chaldeans, and Protestants.
`When they passed the Muslim quarter, the women came out and joked.
They insulted the prisoners. Children threw stones. When the prisoners
came to the Christian quarter, the residents could not go out to talk
or say farewell. Many stood by the railings on their roofs and wept,
praying to God. ¦ The Christians shuffled in silence like pupils on
their way to school. They made no sound. ¦ When they came to the
western city gate, those monks that were still free and the American
missionaries went out on the roofs to see their friends for the last
time and say farewell. They found them in a tragic state, so that
blood could clot in their veins and terror hold them in its grip.
There could not have been anything more difficult for the eye to see
or more painful for the heart than standing there and looking down on
the many chained co-religionists. Every time anyone cast a glance at
that street, he would be reminded of the noble archbishop, the
venerable priests, and the march of the dear Christians.'
In the front marched the police chief Memduh. Many of the 400
prisoners bore the signs of torture and were very weak. Some had
bleeding feet and fingers from nails that had been pulled off; broken
bones; cuts about the head. Some had to be supported by others to walk
at all. Beards had been torn. The chains rattled accentuating the
ghostly silence. And at the end of the procession came the Archbishop
Maloyan, who was handcuffed, barefoot, and limping after bastinado
(foot whipping). All of the men in this first deportation from Mardin
were killed in the night between June 10 and 11'some at Omar Agha's
water spring, some at Sheykhan, some at the ruins of the Zarzavan
fort. Their families in Mardin were told that they had arrived safely
at their destination. No one believed this.
There were few that did not lose a family member that night. This
death march through the center of town was an effective announcement
of the start of a reign of terror. The silent march in clanking chains
through the Muslim and then Christian quarters polarized the
population along religious lines. To all it was obvious that the
government'through the police chief and the soldiers'had targeted the
Armenians; in the case of Mardin, this meant that even the Syriac
Catholics and Protestants were considered to be Armenian by the local
authorities, for they too had been handcuffed and chained like
ordinary criminals. The escorts allowed the Muslim residents to
approach the prisoners and abuse them verbally and physically. Thus,
the local mob came to be an active participant in the scene
orchestrated by the authorities. And it created alliances among the
mob, as they would in the future need to rationalize their actions and
judge them as being moral. They were no longer just bystanders, but
participants, although not of the worst kind.
The Christians that night were confined to their houses and could do
nothing but wave and weep. The procession became a show of the
absolute power of some, and the absolute weakness of the targeted
victims. Knowledge of this death march spread quickly throughout the
Ottoman provinces. In Mosul, the German consul Walter Holstein heard
of it either from Hilmi or Shefik. He informed his ambassador in
Istanbul of the ongoing `general massacre,' who in turn wrote to
Berlin; the German government protested strongly to Talat Pasha, who
was then forced to send a reprimand to the valiof Diyarbakir (who
ignored it).
Witnesses interpreted this targeting of Mardin's Armenians as an
anti-Christian act, and viewed the victims as martyrs of the Christian
faith. There were several local reasons behind this conclusion.
Foremost was that the group of 400 leaders included not just Armenians
of the Catholic Church but also all other Catholics'the Syriacs and
the Chaldeans'and even Protestants. As all groups spoke the local
Arabic dialect and many had Arabic names, the distinguishing feature
of the Armenian language was lacking. The various Catholic groups had
very close relationships; the priests, particularly, met often across
religious lines. Thus, the target group was seen as being constructed
on the grounds of religion, not on Armenian background alone. Second,
the first wave of imprisonments and the death march that followed
included many of the leading religious figures in the city. And they
sustained particularly brutal treatment. Third, almost all of the
witness testimonies came from those who had received religious
education and saw the genocide of 1915 as a repeat of the martyrdom of
the early Christian church in Roman times. They highlighted the choice
given to the prisoners to either convert to Islam or die, and praised
those who chose to die rather than convert. These scenes are told in
great detail. They also emphasized that it was the wrath of God that
struck the army with the typhus epidemic in 1916. The biblical
analogies go back to visions of the Apocalypse, the end of the world,
and the coming of the Last Judgment.
This interpretation, however, makes it difficult to find alternative
motivations behind the genocide. Material, social, and economic causes
play very little role in theses testimonies'with one exception, that
is: Hyacinthe Simon's report. Simon gives a very long list of the vast
sums of money that police chief Memduh and mutasarrif Bedri extorted
or stole from the wealthy Christian families. That he could put
together this long list indicates that the stolen money, jewelry, and
property were common knowledge in Mardin and were discussed widely.
The clergymen who were left in Mardin collected and spent large sums
of money to get their fellow Christians released from prisoners, or to
buy back kidnapped children who were being sold in the marketplace.
Witnesses in Mardin described the step-by-step process of harassment
that led from occasional maltreatment to individual acts of murder,
and finally to full-scale genocide. This process began with the
declaration of mobilization in August 1914. But with the passing of
each month, the feeling of a coming catastrophe grew. Archbishop
Maloyan predicted his murder weeks in advance. In a letter to his
congregation, written on May 1, 1915, he spoke of the decisions made
by the government that would lead either to `extermination or
martyrdom.' Others probably shared the same fears. The evidence
available shows that there was little'arguably infinitesimal'political
agitation that could be used by the government as a pretext for
exterminating the Christian groups. On the contrary, local officials
attested to their loyalty. As has been shown, new officials from the
outside had to be handpicked for their brutality and groomed for the
task of initiating the genocide. After the first death march, more
deportations followed until September 1915, when there were very few
`Armenians' left in place. The instigators and perpetrators had become
very wealthy from the bribes and confiscated property of the victims.
None of the perpetrators were ever put on trial. And there is still no
monument to those officials who tried to save the Armenians.
Let us finish with the words of Jacques Rhétoré, on why he wrote in
such detail of the persecutions of 1915: `The most important thing is
not to let these memories be forgotten. I have written down as well as
I could. I hope the reader will find what I wished to convey, that is
first of all the horror of the terrible crimes that were committed,
with an appeal to God's and people's judgment over those who so turned
against their humanity by ordering and perpetrating them. After that
comes my admiration for the victims, who in such high degree honored
humanity.'
David Gaunt is professor of history at Södertörn University College,
Stockholm, Sweden. He is a social historian who has written widely on
the history of minorities and everyday life. He is the author of
Massacres, Resistance, Protectors: Muslim-Christian Relations in
Eastern Anatolia during World War I, a seminal work on the Assyrian
Genocide.
Notes
1 Shabo Thalay, `Sayfo, Firman, Qafle'Der erste Weltkrieg aus der
Sicht der syrischen Christen,' in Akten des 5. Symposiums zur Sprache,
Geshichte, Theologie und Gegenwartslage der Syriaschen Kirchen, Rainer
Voigt, ed. Berlin 2006, 235-249.
2 Ishaq Armale, Al Qusara fi nakabat al-nasara (Lebanon 1919); Jacques
Rhétoré, `Les Chrétiens aux bêtes: Souvenirs de la guerre sainte
proclamée par les Turcs contre les chrétiens en 1915' (Paris: Cerf
2005); Hyacinthe Simon, `Mardine la ville heroique: Autel et tombeau
de l'Arménie durant les massacres de 1915' (Jounieh, Lebanon: 1991);
Marie-Dominque Berré, `Massacres de Mardin,' in Haigazian
Armenological Journal 17 (1997) 81-106; A. H. B., `Mémoires sur
Mardine 1915,' in Studia Orientalia Christiana Collectanea (Cairo)
29-30 (1998) 59-189; Vincent Mistrih, `Mémoires de A. Y. B. sur les
massacres de Mardine,' in Armenian Perspectives: 10th Anniversary
Conference of the Association International des Etudes Arméniennes,
Ed. Nicholas Awde (London 1997) 287-292; P. V. M., `Autre documents
sur les événements de Mardine,' Studia Orientalia Christiana
Collectanea 29 (1998) 33-77; Ara Sarafian, Ed., `The Disasters of
Mardin during the Persecutions of the Christians, Especially the
Armenians, 1915' in Haigazian Armenological Review 18 (1998) 261-271;
Abed Mschiho Na'man Qarabash, `Vergossenes Blut: Geschichten der
Gruel, die an den Christen in Tűrkei verűbt, und der Leiden, die ihnen
1895 und 1914-1918 zugefűgt wurden' (Glane, Holland 1997).
3 Houghton Library, Harvard University.
4 Armale, 255.
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From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress