By David Gaunt
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 it firman,
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 Ömer 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 vali of
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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