THE “REVOLUTION” AT VAN

The Turkish province of Van lies in the remote north-eastern corner of Asia Minor; it touches the frontiers of Persia on the east and its northern boundary looks toward the Caucasus. It is one of the most beautiful and most fruitful parts of the Turkish Empire and one of the richest in historical associations. The city of Van, which is capital of the vilayet, lies on the eastern shores of the lake of the same name; it is the one large town in Asia in which the Armenian population is larger than the Moslem. In the fall of 1914, its population of about 30,000 people represented one of the most peaceful, happy, and prosperous communities in the Turkish Empire. Though Van, like practically every other section where Armenians lived, had had its periods of oppression and massacre, yet the Moslem yoke, comparatively speaking, rested upon its people rather lightly. Its Turkish Governor, Tahsin Pasha, was one of the more enlightened type of Turkish officials. Relations between the Armenians, who lived in the better section of the city, and the Turks and the Kurds, who occupied the mud huts in the Moslem quarter, had been tolerably agreeable for many years.

The location of this vilayet, however, inevitably made it the scene of military operations, and made the activities of its Armenian population a matter of daily suspicion. Should Russia attempt an invasion of Turkey one of the most accessible routes lay through this province. The war had not gone far when causes of irritation arose. The requisitions of army supplies fell far more heavily upon the Christian than upon the Mohammedan elements in Van, just as they did in every other part of Turkey. The Armenians had to stand quietly by while the Turkish officers appropriated all their cattle, all their wheat, and all their goods of every kind, giving them only worthless pieces of paper in exchange.

The attempt at general disarmament that took place also aroused their apprehensions, which were increased by the brutal treatment visited upon Armenian soldiers in the Caucasus. On the other hand, the Turks made many charges against the Christian population, and, in fact, they{194} attributed to them the larger share of the blame for the reverses which the Turkish Armies had suffered in the Caucasus. The fact that a considerable element in the Russian forces was composed of Armenians aroused their unbridled wrath. Since about half the Armenians in the world inhabit the Russian provinces in the Caucasus, and are liable, like all Russians, to military service, there was certainly no legitimate grounds for complaint, so far as these Armenian levies were bona fide subjects of the Tsar. But the Turks asserted that large numbers of Armenian soldiers in Van and other of their Armenian provinces deserted, crossed the border, and joined the Russian Army, where their knowledge of roads and the terrain was an important factor in the Russian victories. Though the exact facts are not yet ascertained, it seems not unlikely that such desertions, perhaps a few hundred, did take place.

At the beginning of the war Turkish officials appeared in this neighbourhood and appealed to the Armenian leaders to go into Russian Armenia and attempt to start revolutions against the Russian Government, and the fact that the Ottoman Armenians refused to do this contributed further to the prevailing irritation. The Turkish Government has made much of the “treasonable” behaviour of the Armenians of Van, and have even urged it as an excuse for their subsequent treatment of the whole race. Their attitude illustrates once more the perversity of the Turkish mind. After massacring hundreds of thousands of Armenians in the course of thirty years, outraging the women and girls, and robbing and maltreating them in every conceivable way, the Turks still apparently believed that they had the right to expect from them the most enthusiastic “loyalty.” That the Armenians all over Turkey sympathised with the Entente was no secret. “If you want to know how the war is going,” remarked a humorous Turkish newspaper, “all you need to do is to look in the face of an Armenian. If he is smiling, then the Allies are winning; if he is downcast, then the Germans are successful.” If an Ottoman Armenian soldier should desert and join the Russians that would unquestionably constitute a technical crime against the State, and might be punished without violating the rules of all civilised countries. Only the Turkish mind, however—and possibly the German—could regard it as furnishing an excuse for the terrible barbarities that now took place.

Though the air all during the autumn and winter of 1914-15 was filled with premonitions of trouble, the Armenians behaved with remarkable self-restraint. For years it had been the{195} Turkish policy to provoke the Christian population into committing overt acts, and then seizing upon such misbehaviour as an excuse for massacres. The Armenian clergy and political leaders saw many evidences that the Turks were now up to their old tactics, and they therefore went among the people, cautioning them to keep quiet, to bear all insults, and even outrages, patiently, so as not to give the Moslems the opening which they were seeking. “Even though they burn a few of our villages,” these leaders would say, “do not retaliate, for it is better that a few be destroyed than that the whole nation be massacred.”

When the war started, the Central Government recalled Tahsin Pasha, the conciliatory Governor of Van, and replaced him with Djevdet Bey, a brother-in-law of Enver Pasha. This act in itself was most disquieting. Turkish officialdom has always contained a minority of men who do not believe in massacres as a State policy and who cannot be depended upon to carry out strictly the most bloody orders of the Central Government. Whenever massacres have been planned, therefore, it has been customary first to remove such “untrustworthy” public servants and replace them with men who are regarded as more reliable. The character of Tahsin’s successor made his displacement still more alarming. Djevdet had sp............