How did the Young Turk regime develop a platform
and means of mass violence, and how was this applied
in Trabzon Province in June/July 1915?
Figure 1 Cemal Azmi Bey, Vali (governor) of Trabzon province, 1914-1917
UVA/NIOD Master’s Thesis by Timothy Edward Klus
For Kjell Anderson – supervisor, first-reader
Abstract
This study examines the impact of the Balkans Wars of 1912-13 on the Young Turk regime that came to power in the midst of these brutal and conflicts. It then focuses on one province of the Ottoman Empire – Trabzon, in the summer of 1915 – to see how this radical regime used its tools and political influence to organize, enable and perpetrate mass violence against the Armenian population. The dynamics of this violence in Trabzon reveals much about the relationship between the centre and the periphery of power in the empire during this extraordinarily violent period. These dynamics also sheds light on some motives of local level perpetrators to do what they did that summer. The evidence contained herein indicates thoroughness by the regime in preparing for, and engaging in, mass killing, which corrects the official Turkish position that Armenians were merely deported from war zones. In fact, by late spring 1915, they were targeted for wholesale destruction; the ‘deportation’ from their homelands was mostly a euphemistic ruse. By the end of summer 1915, the Armenians of Trabzon were virtually wiped out.
Introduction 1
1.1 Purpose and scope of this study 1
1.2 Methodology and Historiography 3
Chapter Two: The Young Turks: Brutalized and Radical 7
2.1 Brutalization and Reaction: Mass Violence in the Balkans and the Young
Turk Coup d’État in Istanbul 7
2.2 “Do to others as they have done to you”: Young Turk consolidate power and
the tone of a radical, violent regime 9
2.3 Creation and expansion of the Special Organization 11
2.4.1 Filling with ranks with unsavoury characters 12
2.4.2 Big risks, unsound strategies, new objectives 15
2.5 “A Radical New Phase” 18
Chapter Three: ‘Deportation’ and Mass Murder in Trabzon 21
3.1 Introduction 21
3.2. The mood changes in Trabzon, 1914-1915 23
3.3 The contours of genocide in Trabzon 24
3.3.1 The Hospital of Death 30
3.3.2 ‘Deportation’ by sea 32
3.4 The confluence of agencies in expediting the ‘deportations’ in Trabzon 34
3.5 Wartime court-martial reveals jurisdictional division of spoils 38
3.6 An American in Samsun 41
4.1 From center to periphery: the euphemistic lie of deportation in Trabzon 45
4.2 Fear of authority; orders are orders 49
4.3 Easy pickings from ‘abandoned property’ 50
4.4 Sexual exploitation and violence 56
4.5 What the Trabzon trials tell us about responsibility for violence 59
Conclusion 63
Bibliography 67
Introduction
Why is this century worse than those that have gone before? In a stupor of sorrow and grief
It located the blackest wound But somehow couldn’t heal it The earth’s sun is still shining in the West And the roofs of towns sparkle in its rays, While here death marks house with crosses And calls in the crows and the crows fly over.
Anna Akhmatova (1919)
1.1 Purpose and scope of this study
In 1915 the Turks, Kurds, and Armenians that had shared the Anatolian peninsula for centuries came to a decisive moment in their relationship. But it was a relationship of extreme asymmetry; political, economic, and military resources were entirely in the Turkish-Ottoman state’s favour. From January 1913 until October 1918, a virtual dictatorship of the Committee of Union and Progress (İttihad ve Terakki Cemiyeti, CUP, Young Turks) would steer the stricken but still-robust Ottoman state through not only a course of war and defeat, but one of profound demographic engineering, which quite rapidly came to include a general policy of genocide toward several of its Christian minorities with the Armenians as its primary focus. This paper examines how in the context of total war, in the “fatal embrace of extreme ideology and extreme power”1 the most extreme CUP policies toward the Armenians of Trabzon province
were carried out between April and August 1915.
This paper will examine three key aspects of the Aghet (Armenian genocide) by presenting the following questions that correspond with chapters Two, Three and Four respectively. Chapter Two asks how did the violence in the Balkans just prior to the First World War help create the environment and conditions necessary to enable a violently radical approach to solving the Ottoman state’s real and perceived threats. Chapter Three asks how, and by whom, was this policy applied in Trabzon vilayet 1 Uğur Ümit Üngör, ‘The Destruction of the Other as the Validation of the Self,’ in Samuel
Totten (ed.), Advancing Genocide Studies: Personal Accounts and Insights from Scholars (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2015), p.44.
(province) during the summer of 1915, once the decision was made by the CUP leadership to engage in mass violence toward the Armenians. Chapter Four examines the dynamics of, and motives for mass murder in Trabzon. What do these aspects tell us about the relationship between the center of national power in Istanbul and the periphery in a specific area? Taken together, the answers to these questions form a clear matrix of characteristics that should help us better understand the overall dynamics of the Aghet in its most destructive phase during that remarkably violent summer.
The entirety of the Armenian genocide has been characterized as a “series of overlapping processes that meshed with one another and generated an intended and coherent process of destruction.”2 These processes may be seen as the ‘pillars’ that,
although they may stand on their own, combine to form an overall mechanism of destruction. The ‘pillars’ include: mass executions of Armenian cultural and political elites, a virtual ‘decapitation’ of a targeted community; expropriation of property by their killers and benefactors ; deportations of very large numbers of people from their ancestral homelands, usually to very inhospitable destinations; the forced assimilation of Christians into Muslim communities; famine crime, involving an “ethnic hierarchy of food,”3 and the destruction of material culture that helped define Armenian
identity. Curiously, mass murder or organized, coordinated genocidal massacres have rarely been represented as a stand-alone process in previous commentary, and are usually conflated within the rubric of deportation. Therefore, this paper represents a slightly different approach; namely, by holding that the use of widespread massacres, primarily organized and authorized by the leaders of the regime, and executed by its own paramilitary force (the Special Organization, henceforth SO) deserves its own status as a key ‘pillar’ of the destructive process. A preeminent historian of the Aghet, Uğur Üngör, is correct when he warns, “Reducing the Armenian genocide to ‘mere’ mass murder would downplay its complexity.”4 But permanently removing (i.e.,
killing) the Armenians ensured the best chance of success for the radical policy makers in the CUP. Clearly, massacres occurred while deportations were in progress, 2 Uğur Ümit Üngör, ‘The Armenian Genocide: A Multi Dimensional Process of Destruction,’ Global Dialogue, 15:1, Winter/Spring 2013.
3 Ibid.
4 Üngör, The Making of Modern Turkey Nation and State in Eastern Anatolia, 1913-1950 , p.252.
often by ‘rogue’ tribal and criminal outlaws with little or no connection to the Ottoman state. But this was hardly discouraged by the ‘escorts’ of these large deportation parties, whose destruction seemed built into this deportation process. Indeed, if some managed to survive their ordeals as far as the desert, as hundreds of thousands did, they were subsequently annihilated there. Therefore the term
deportation has always seemed disingenuous or misleading in this context; they were generally more like death marches or a means to concentrate victims for for
subsequent mass murder. Tens, if not hundreds, of thousands were murdered in situ by death squads who were formed, trained and led by representatives of the state in specific killing zones throughout the empire. Therefore this killing process, in
conjunction with the others, helps give shape to the contours of this particular instance of genocide; thus warranting a detailed examination of the formation of the SO and its activities specifically in Trabzon. By looking at how and why the Trabzon paladins of the CUP applied such murderous initiatives we can also gain a better sense of the consistencies and variations in the orders which give a local ‘flavour’ to the mass violence.
1.2 Methodology and Historiography
This paper aims to build a strong argument leading to the conclusion that the
processes of genocide, planned and implemented by a brutal, brutalized, and
brutalizing political elite can be identified, followed and analysed at the top, middle and bottom levels of state perpetration. By showing how various agencies killed, the methods they used along with some motivating factors, we can extrapolate these events into a comprehensive matrix that reveals a wide-angle perspective of mass violence in 1915. It also allows us to move further away from the all-too common error of reducing perpetrators to simple villains that reflect a simplistic essentialist paradigm. As several decades of progressively nuanced research and writing on genocide have illustrated, motives and methods of mass murder perpetration at “ground level” is a complex and murky business, and it may or may not reflect what the top-level planners had intended. An approach that focuses on the local patterns of violence allows us to conclude that although centrally organized, the modes of
genocide were considerably differentiated.
takes its cue from such in building a core argument that the nature of the Young Turk regime allowed it to create a “state within a state” and impose this in the provinces with enthusiastic and resourceful local facilitators. In 1995, a seminal figure of late 20th century Armenian genocide scholarship, Vahakn N. Dadrian, published an
important and comprehensive study, The History of the Armenian Genocide: Ethnic
Conflict from the Balkans to the Caucasus. In it, he states that “the use of proxies by
the government, who were more often than not recruited from the (criminal) substrata of Ottoman society… is significant enough to warrant the…[use] of the term … culture of massacre.”5 While I might concur with some historians who find this term
“static and essentialist,”6 it does offer a useful starting point for consideration of the
three central questions of this thesis. Furthermore, what exactly was this “culture” of massacre, and did one exist in Trabzon in 1915? In the twenty years since Dadrian’s ground breaking work, there has been a notable expansion of interest in the Aghet by scholars who have largely moved away from Dadrian’s “intentionalist”7 position and
toward a more nuanced and dynamic one. Such a multidimensional approach that engages the who and why, can give us in a particular case a more textured feel for the complexity of mass violence, rather than stilted predispositions based on “modernity’s very method of aggregating human beings within single, fixed, unchanging and irreducibly essentialised categories.”8 This paper strives to reflect these complexities
and to redress the observation of an American historian that
it is as if hordes of individuals think and act as prescribed by ideologies of nationalism, religion or race. Terminology then comes to reconfirm the view imposed by the genocide that, ultimately, one need not account for real Armenians leading real lives whose disappearance from their homes and from history must be accounted for; one is comforted by the thought that Armenians can be reduced to a corollary of a concept.9
5 Vahakn N. Dadrian, History of the Armenian Genocide: Ethnic Conflict from the Balkans
to Anatolia to the Caucasus (Providence: Berghahn Books, 2005), p.121.
6 Uğur Ümit Üngör, ‘Paramilitary Violence in the Collapsing Ottoman Empire’, in Robert Gerwarth and John Horne(eds.),. War in Peace: Paramilitary Violence in Europe after the
Great War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), p.181.
7 This term is taken from the Holocaust debate that started in the 1970s between the ‘intentionalists’ like Lucy Dawidowicz who held that Hitler planned the total destruction of European Jewry long before even coming to power, and the (moderate) ‘functionalists’ such as Christopher Browning who argue a “crooked path” of ad hoc measures toward full-scale genocide.
8 Mark Levene, Genocide in the Age of the Nation-State, Volume I:The Meaning of Genocide
By first examining the basic context and circumstances of the CUP’s taking power, its ‘hijacking’ of the state apparatus and creation of a dedicated paramilitary force, this paper wades into this debate by ultimately concluding that while both sides make strong cases, in the end, Donald Bloxham’s paradigm of “cumulative
radicalization”10 - whereby circumstances in 1914-15 literally pushed a radical
regime toward genocide in short but crucial stages – proves to be the most compelling argument. Although hindsight affords us the 20/20 perspicacity to join the dots and make a stronger case for intentionality, the Armenian genocide, like most genocides, was not a clearly predetermined program. Historian Jay Winter has observed that “What turned a war crime into a genocidal act was the context of total war, a context that translated deportation swiftly into the mass slaughter, abuse, and starvation of an entire ethnic group potentially troublesome to an authoritarian regime at war.”11 This
centrality of wartime escalation of policy context reflects the axiom that once the decision for killing Armenians en masse was made by the top Young Turks, it was “carried out ruthlessly and mercilessly.”12 Chapter Three surveys this unrelenting
implementation in Trabzon province to show us which local actors made it happen, and how. Chapter Four then refines this by regarding motives and benefits available for the perpetrators in Trabzon and for the regime in Istanbul, thus factoring the relationship between the centre of power and one of its peripheral regions.
This study will incorporate research from a wide variety of source material that represents an array of approaches and perspectives, with secondary sources
constituting the bulk of sources used. Perhaps the single most important secondary source that has helped give shape and cogency, not to mention content, to my
investigation and thesis development has been Raymond Kevorkian’s The Armenian
Genocide: A Complete History. Fatma Müge Göçek has reflected this gratitude in a
review: “Kévorkian’s ability to employ and draw from all sources enables him to 9Gerard Libaridian, Modern Armenia: People, Nation, State (New Brunswick: Transaction, 2007), p.151.
10Donald Bloxham, ‘The Armenian Genocide of 1915–16: Cumulative Radicalisation and the Development of a Destruction Policy’, Past and Present, 181:1, Nov. 2003.
11Jay Winter, ‘Under Cover of War’, in Robert Gellately and Ben Kiernan, (eds.), The Specter of Genocide: Mass Murder in Historical Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 208.
12 Richard G Hovannisian, The Armenian Genocide: Cultural and Ethical Legacies (New Brunswick: Transaction, 2007).
present, for the first time, as full and complete a portrayal of this violent past as possible.”13 Mark Levene’s serial volumes on the nature, development and
perpetration of genocide have been very helpful in creating an appreciation of this and other genocides within a coherent historical and sociological framework.14 This
study has also benefitted from Taner Akçam’s body of work, which utilizes careful reading of existing documents to ‘triangulate’ circumstantial evidence into reliable evidence. Uğur Üngör’s dynamic research, commentary, and models with which he argues the inter-related complexities of genocide have likewise provided much impetus and material with which to undertake this study.15 The sum total of source
material has provided the tools with which to clarify some important aspects of the Young Turk-enabled mass violence against the Armenians; it is hoped than some of the erudition, passion and clarity of thought which I’ve had the privilege to read in these and other writings comes across clearly and coherently in the following pages.
Chapter Two
The Young Turks: Brutalized and Radical
The people is like a garden. We are supposed to be its gardeners!
First the bad shoots are to be cut.
13 Fatma Müge Göçek,. Review of Raymond Kevorkian: The Armenian Genocide in EHR, CXXVIII. 533 (August. 2013), p.998-1000.
14 These include: Meaning of Genocide (2003), The Rise of the West (2003), The Crisis of
Genocide Vols. 1 & 2 (2013)
15 Reading Üngör’s The Making of Modern Turkey first inspired and motivated me to engage in this academic program.
And then the scion is to be grafted.16
Ziya Gökalp, Kızılelma (1911) This chapter provides some insight into the context of the Young Turk/CUP asserting a virtual dictatorship in the midst of a shrinking empire and ‘proto-genocidal’
violence in the Balkans. Furthermore, we examine some of the tools with which this radical and ideologically driven cabal devised and refined in preparation for a reckoning with its “internal enemies.”
2.1 Brutalization and Reaction: Mass Violence in the Balkans and the Young Turk Coup d’État in Istanbul
To begin to understand why mass murder prevailed in 1915, we must first come to terms with the extraordinary prevalence of violence that preceded it in and around the Ottoman “shatter zones.”17 At the turn of the 20th century, there was a sort of zero-sum
calculus between the expanding Russian Empire and the contracting Ottoman Empire. The two points of contact between the two were in the Balkan regions through Russian “clients” such as Bulgaria, and in the Caucasus region, where contact was direct. The plight of Muslims in these areas of Ottoman contraction was terrible and hundreds of thousands became victims of numerous local massacres which have been characterized as “sub-genocidal violence.”18 This extended period of general violence truly brutalized
not only the entire region’s polity, but created a universe of anger, fear and deep resentments that would fester in Muslim hearts from the ruling Young Turks down to indigent mujahirs (refugees) struggling to rebuild their lives in Anatolia. These
refugees came from all social classes, with the mujahirs from the Balkans comprising a large contingent of “intellectuals, soldiers, and former officials capable of articulating their discontent in ideological and political organizations.”19
16 Joost Jongerden & Jelle Verheij, Social Relations in Ottoman Diyarbakir, 1878—1915 (Leiden: Brill, 2012), p.80.
17 An apt designation from: Omer Bartov and Eric D. Weitz, Shatterzone of Empires:
Coexistence and Violence in the German, Habsburg, Russian, and Ottoman Borderlands
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013). 18 Levene, The Crisis of Genocide, p.96.
19 Michael Mann, The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), p.114.
According to some sources in the thirty-odd years prior to 1914, as many as 5.5 million Muslims were forced out of former Ottoman lands, and up to 5 million more were killed, or died from conditions arising from forced relocations.20 In its official
report of 1914, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace concluded presciently, ”We are shown millions of human beings systematically degraded by their own doing, corrupted by their own violence…[which] carries its own punishment.”21 This was total
war, if not on the scale of the coming worldwide conflict, then certainly equal in its nastiness. What is clear and most relevant for this study is that the inability of the Ottoman state to defend its Muslim citizens and sovereign integrity in the face of a composite and sometime coordinated Christian onslaught led to existential anguish, especially among the so-called Young Turks. In a recent essay, Uğur Üngör argues “It is no exaggeration to state that the effect of the Balkan wars on Ottoman society was nothing short of apocalyptic.”22 The immediate political manifestation of this sense of
doom was the Young Turk coup d’état of 23 January 1913. Traumatized by the loss of Libya to the Italians and with the Bulgarian army only thirty kilometers from Istanbul, and outraged by Grand Vezir (Prime Minister) Kamil Pasha’s entertaining of proposals put forth by the Great Powers to further weaken Ottoman sovereignty, the CUP
overthrew the government. Led by prominent Young Turk radicals Major Enver and Talaat Bey, a small, armed gang – which also included other top CUP personalities whom we will see more of later, such as Bahaeddin Şakir and Dr. Nazım - forced Kamil to resign and shot War Minister Nazım Pasha dead in the melee.23 From the
outset the Young Turks showed no hesitation in using murder as a political expedient.
2.4 “Do to others as they have done to you”24 - Young Turks consolidate power and set the tone of a radical, violent regime
20 Justin McCarthy, Death and Exile: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims, 1821–
1922. (Princeton, N.J.: Darwin Press. 1995), pp.159-61.
21 George F. Kennan, The Other Balkan Wars: A 1913 Carnegie Endowment Inquiry in
Retrospect, with a New Introduction and Reflections on the Present Conflict (Washington,
DC: Carnegie Endowment/Distributed by the Brookings Institution,1993) p.134-135 22 Üngör, The Making of Modern Turkey, p.43.
23 Mustafa Aksakal, The Ottoman Road to War in 1914: The Ottoman Empire and the First
World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), p.79.
24 Üngör, ‘Genocide and the End of the Ottoman Empire,’ in Carmichael, Cathie and Maguire, Richard C. (eds.), The Routledge History of Genocide (Oxford: Routledge, 2015), p.279.
In the aftermath of such Balkan calamities, the Young Turk regime did what most young radicals who suddenly possess with the levers of power do: they acted as if there was no tomorrow, because it may have seemed to them that there might very well not
be one. Enver organized the liberation of Edirne, became a general at age thirty-two
and used his great popularity with scores of young fedayi (volunteer cadres of the CUP and SO) to become Minister of War in January 1914.25 Enver’s cohort Talaat promoted
himself from CUP boss to Minister of the Interior, and together they transformed the political climate in Istanbul. Rough characters like Nazım’s assassin and leading SO member, Yakup Cemil, and others killed with impunity, mocking the rule of law.26
From the back halls of power, the Young Turks became
the propelling force behind state terror … [and] the paramilitaries who used to live as outlaws amidst civil war conditions now rose to state power. This lent them legitimacy and transposed the severely depacified culture to Anatolia. Their experience of paramilitary warfare in the Rumelian countryside was transplanted into the offices of the Ottoman government.27
The growing sense of lawlessness, combined with the bitterness of recent loss, particularly of Salonika - the “cradle of the CUP” - led to a rise in mob
demonstrations calling for “action” from the Young Turks.28 Newspapers explicitly
supportive of the CUP such as Tanin wrote impassioned editorials assuring Turks that “the day had finally come [when] the Turks would make an historical accounting with those…whom they had been previously unable to do so.”29 The editor, Hüseyin Cahit
Bey, chillingly predicted that the Turks would exact revenge, “the horrors of which had not yet been recorded in history.” 30 In the halls of government, the Ottoman
Deputies Chamber president exhorted “From this exalted seat, I call on the nation: do not forget! I call on it: do not forget beloved Salonica, verdant Monastir, Kossovo,
25 Handan Nezir-Akmeşe, The Birth of Modern Turkey: The Ottoman Military and the
March to World War I (New York: I.B.Tauris, 2005), p.157.
26 Fatma Müge Goçek, Denial of Violence: Ottoman, Turkish Present and Collective
Violence Against the Armenians, 1789-2009 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015),
pp.206-207.
27 Üngör, ‘Genocide and the End of the Ottoman Empire,’ p.280-81.
28 Erik Zürcher, Turkey: A Modern History (London: Tauris & Co. Ltd., 2005), p.109. 29 Taner Akçam, A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish
Responsibility (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006), p.117.
30 Mehmet Polatel and Uğur Ümit Üngör, Confiscation and Destruction: The Young Turk
Scutari, Janina; all of beautiful Rumelia!”31 Numerous poems were published in this
period that reflected a Turkish society embittered by defeat: “Enmity … your children’s name today is Conquering Vengeance (Saadi İntikam).” 32 The author of
this and many other poems extolling the glories of Turkishness and exhorting a sense of same was Ziya Gökalp, the “ideologue and poet laureate of the Young Turks.”33 He
would be a constant and highly influential of the CUP Central Committee, and an unbending proponent of radical measures that harnessed a Turkishness toward extreme wartime measures.
For his part, Enver, now Pasha, reflected this pervasive, if as yet rather unfocused, sense of seething revanchism in a letter to his wife from spring 1913: “If I could tell you the savagery the enemy has inflicted…a stone’s throw from Istanbul, you would understand the things that enter the heads of poor Muslims far away. But our anger is strengthening: revenge, revenge, revenge; there is no other word.”34
There were issues with “exacting vengeance” on the reviled Balkan Christian enemies: there were very few Bulgarian in the truncated Ottoman Empire, and Bulgaria itself was leaning toward an alliance with the Central powers, as were the Young Turks. Furthermore, although there was a large Greek presence in Anatolia - with up to 150,000 deported to Greece proper and some atrocities committed against them during 1913-191435 - the regime did not want to provoke the Greeks into joining
the Entente at this precarious moment.36 That left the Armenians, whose own political
radicals were demanding reforms at this chaotic time, which left all Armenians increasingly isolated and denounced as “ungrateful… who, by collaborating with the imperialists, struck us from behind.”37 This would not be the last time in the 20th
century that the ‘stab in the back’ myth would be disseminated by an authoritarian clique bent on war and radically violent demographic policies.
31 Akçam, From Empire to Republic: Turkish Nationalism & The Armenian Genocide. (London: Zed Books, 2004), p.94.
32 Ibid., p.95.
33 Üngör, ‘A Reign of Terror, CUP Rule in Diyarbekir Province, 1913-1923,’ University of Amsterdam, Department of History Master’s thesis, June 2005, p.14.
34 Üngör, The Making of Modern Turkey, p.45.
35 Donald Bloxham. The Great Game of Genocide, Imperialism, Nationalism, and the
Destruction of the Ottoman Armenians (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p.63.
36 Erik Zürcher, TheYoung Turk Legacy and Nation Building. From the Ottoman Empire to
Atatürk’s Turkey (New York: IB Taurus & Co., 2010), p.119.
2.3 Creation and expansion of the Special Organization
Eşref Kuşçubaşı, a close friend of Enver, confessed in his memoirs that the Special Organization was a “black box that became the fundamental structure for ensuring the security of the Ottoman state at home and abroad...To this end, it had its own officers, uniforms, treasury and secret code; it was a state within the state.”38 A year after the
CUP strengthened its hold on power after the 1913 coup, Enver Paşa told a confidant (and later SO commander) Kuşçubaşı that
the only way to avoid further collapse was to achieve a unity of the Turkish and Islamic worlds. As for the non-Muslims within the country, they had shown themselves not to be in favor of the further continuation of the state’s existence. The salvation of the Ottoman state, then, was dependent on measures being taken against them.39
In his PhD dissertation, Polat Safi argues that the SO was originally set up as an intelligence operation, in parallel with the existing army ‘Second Branch’, in 1911, but “it did not serve the functions normally expected of an intelligence
organization.”40 Safi goes on to explain the SO’s clandestine nature as a reflection of
the “level of secrecy surrounding this subsidiary organization of the CUP. It was an organization that even its contemporaries had no idea existed, and deputies had rarely heard its name.”41 Talaat, along with Midhat Şükrü, another disgruntled radical from
Salonika and the wartime general secretary of the CUP Central Committee (CC), saw to it that a growing cohort of “military officers upset with foreign intervention in Ottoman Macedonia joined the secret organization, among them the handsome, flamboyant officer Enver Bey. They recruited men, including criminals, to form irregular bands. At one stroke an intellectual movement gained military muscle.”42
Historian Taner Akçam synthesizes “a good number of sources” to argue that there was a growing difference of opinion in regards to the leadership and direction of the 38 Raymond Kevorkian, The Armenian Genocide: A Complete History (New York: I.B.Tauris, 2011), p.183.
39 Akçam, From Empire To Republic, p.143.
40 Polat Safi, unpublished PhD Dissertation: ‘The Ottoman Special Organization.’ Bilkent University (2012), p.62.
41 Ibid., 69.
42 Şükrü Hanioğlu, Preparation for a Revolution: The Young Turks, 1902–1908 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), p.226.
SO from 1914.43 This change in direction from the War to the Interior Ministry was
confirmed by mid-1914, as Talaat had gained enough influence over it to install Central Committee (CC) members Dr. Nazım and Dr. Bahaeddin Şakir to oversee its expansion.44 Yusuf Rıza, who would supervise SO activities in close coordination
with his boss Şakir and party colleague Nail Bey from his headquarters in Trabzon, testified after the war that “individual SO units were formed under party control, independently in Anatolia on the orders of either local administrators or party secretaries…[it] was created to carry out deportation operations due to insufficient gendarmes forces.”45
2.4.1 Filling the ranks with unsavory characters
In August 1914, as Enver was concluding a secret treaty with Germany, Talaat was in discussion with Hilmi Bey, CUP secretary in Erzurum (Şakir’s new base of
operations) about a shortage of SO manpower. Hilmi called for the release of “people held in the Trabzon prison…to form them into irregular units under the command of [regular army] officers, and especially to promote prisoners who have a reputation leading outlaw gangs.”46 Talaat’s replied that “permission would be granted to release
the prisoners if it appeared necessary…[and] a list will be prepared and sent in regard to these.”47 In a suspension of the rule of law not atypical of the Young Turks, the
Justice Minister Ibrahim Bey, issued a “special amnesty” for convicted and imprisoned criminals not only in Trabzon, but effective “throughout Anatolia.”48
During the postwar Istanbul trials, Ibrahim Bey explained this in a way that explicitly underscores how completely the CUP had hijacked the Ottoman government and that it was clear why the prisoners were being freed:
The public prosecutor had emptied the prisons to enable the convicts to enroll in that organization [SO]. When this came to my attention I raised hell. Only through a request to the pertinent ministry and through an Imperial rescript can a convict be freed. But the military 43 Akçam, A Shameful Act, p.94.
44 Kevorkian, pp.183-184. 45 Akçam, A Shameful Act, p.95. 46 Ibid., p.134-35.
47 Ibid.
intervened, arguing ‘we can’t afford neglecting the services of a sizable force component.’ Accordingly, we framed and enacted a respective law which your esteemed assembly approved.49
When Ibrahim Bey and the Grand Vizier at the time, Sait Halim, were pressed to say why they didn’t overrule Talaat and Enver, to whom they were constitutionally superior in rank, they both gave the same wan response: “Talaat was in charge of everything.”50
While commanding an SO unit (probably the size of a battalion) later in 1914, Lieutenant-Colonel Stange of the Imperial German Army would report to his
superiors, “It is definitely a fact that these Armenians, almost without exception, were murdered in the region of Mamachatun by so-called ‘Tschetes’51 and similar scum.”52
Since the prisons were emptied, this doesn’t seem like an exaggeration; but the question remains: who did comprise the rank and file of the SO? The three key sources of personnel were: tribesmen, mostly Kurds with some Circassians; so-called ‘volunteers’; and jailed convicts.53 The first source should seem unsurprising: the (re)
introduction of Kurdish and Circassian tribes was given an official push by a cynical CUP, who promised the tribal chiefs freedom to act with impunity, occasionally in liaison with CUP representatives offering payment directly to the tribal chiefs, or allowing them to keep the spoils of their raids.54 Another source, the ‘volunteers’
(gönüllüler), largely refugees from the Balkans and Caucasus, have been typified as 49 Vahakn N. Dadrian & Taner Akçam. Judgment at Istanbul: The Armenian Genocide
Trials (New York: Berghahn Books. 2011), p.55.
50 Ibid., p.56.
51 There is a point worth noting with regard to the term çete. Historians interpret the term variously as ‘brigand’, ‘band’, ‘bandit’, etc. According to the Polat Safi
dissertation, the expression is first found in Ottoman primary sources of the 1890s and applied to non-Turkish relevant nationalities (i.e., Bulgarian, Greeks) and had a variety of meanings – mere “plunder and robbery”, or more sophisticated political or
intelligence associations - depending on context (Polat, PhD Dissertation, p.110-112).
In the milieu of conflict and terror it would have been exceedingly difficult for most observers and victims alike to be able to distinguish between the various constituent socio-ethnic groups that made up the SO; hence the ubiquity of the term çete, which refers to paramilitary personnel and rogue tribesmen and common freelancing criminals in the context of the Aghet.
52Gust (ed.), ‘From Colonel Stange to the German Military Mission in Constantinople, Erserum, 23 August 1915,’ [1915-08-23-DE-013].
53 Akçam, A Shameful Act, p.134.
54 Uğur Ümit Üngör, ‘The Armenian Genocide in the Context of 20th-Century
Paramilitarism’ in Alexis Demirdjian(ed.), The Armenian Genocide Legacy (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), p.14.
“social outcasts, whose pitiful condition was a subject of comment”55 A close
associate of Nâzım later wrote that these nebulously defined groups were “an army of murderers.”56 Üngör has typified many of these types as “poor, unemployed young
men…from the urban demimonde of louche coffee shops and criminal networks.”57
The final, and probably largest source of SO manpower came from emptying Anatolia’s jails: “These rank-and-file recruits were conscripted criminals from the prisons, their crimes pardoned for undertaking this atrocious task.”58 Thus, for the
most part the ranks were filled with the type of person one might expect to easily commit mass crimes: “savages and criminals,”59 “scum,” (see Stange, above) “rapists
and immoral men”60 These criminal dregs of Ottoman society became ‘trained’ and
armed paramilitary operatives, accountable to the CUP “state within a state” and soon directed at a vulnerable segment of the population with predictably horrific results.
2.4.2 Big risks, unsound strategies, new objectives
Once the war in Europe got underway in the summer of 1914, Enver and Talaat recognized an opportunity to aggrandize their regime. As historian Jan Zürcher has argued, the debacle of the Balkan Wars convinced the Young Turks that “continued isolation would mean the end of the empire when it was clear the war would be general,” and despite this great risk “the pro-German factions amongst the Unionists decided to take the plunge anyway.”61 Anxious to prove his mettle in battle and
foment Muslim ‘Pan-Turanian’62 rebellions throughout the Caucasus, Persia and
55 Kevorkian, The Armenian Genocide, p.456. 56 Akçam, A Shameful Act, p.135.
57 Üngör, ‘Paramilitary Violence in the Collapsing Ottoman Empire’ in Robert Gerwarth & John Horne(eds.),War in Peace: Paramilitary Violence in Europe after the Great War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), p.181.
58 Mann, The Dark Side of Democracy, p.166.
59 Üngör, ‘Paramilitary Violence in the Collapsing Ottoman Empire,’ p.169. 60 Akçam and Dadrian, Judgment at Istanbul, p.42.
61 Zürcher, Turkey, p.112.
62 “The ideal future homeland of all Turks, ‘Turan,’ was, however, for the most part a fantasy entertained by a handful of intellectuals. In a poem on this theme composed in 1911, Ziya Gökalp wrote: “Neither Turkey nor Turkistan is a fatherland for the Turks / The fatherland is an enormous and eternal country: Turan.”Only during the war did it become fashionable to discuss the union of all Turks as a practical possibility to be realized on the
Azerbaijan Enver concocted a “wildly ambitious”63 plan to attack the Russian at
Sarıkamış in December. Despite a promising start, the Third Army was decimated with the vast majority of casualties, perhaps as high as eighty per cent coming from the predictable winter elements and poor logistical support.64 The catastrophe at
Sarıkamış is often rightly regarded as a watershed moment that “brought the Unionists…face to face with great disillusionment …The defeat extinguished their Turanist and Islamist dreams.”65 With breathtaking cynicism, Enver, through the
War Ministry’s ‘Second Department,’ almost immediately created the myth that “the defeat was due to a treacherous deception, to a conspiracy of murderous criminals, to our fighting units being stabbed in the back by the traitors among us,” 66 instead of his
own shoddy generalship, or the prowess of the Russian army. This precise word –
traitor – is critical here because it is common knowledge what the traditional traitor’s
punishment is: not deportation, or exile, or prison; but almost always death.
Furthermore, the sense that strategic victory was now unattainable prompted the Young Turks to find a way to salvage something from the calamity at Sarıkamış, just as Hitler’s decision, in the view of some historians, to destroy the Jews of Europe came at roughly the moment when Germany started to lose their strategic initiative in 1941.67 One gets the sense that Enver had prepared for this possible outcome because,
as his general inspector of censorship stated after the war, “In Istanbul, the propaganda work necessary to justify an enormous crime was fully prepared: the Armenians had united with the enemy.”68 To gain maximum ‘mileage’ from this
crisis, Turks were warned that “revolution was about to break out in Istanbul, [the Armenians] were going to kill the Unionist leaders, they were going to force open the Straits [near Istanbul].”69 Thus we see how the rhetoric in the aftermath of avoidable
military disaster reflected CUP thinking that the inconvenient presence of Armenians
ruins of the Russian Empire. “ Şükrü Hanioğlu, A Brief History of the Late Ottoman Empire (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008), p.188.
63 Edward J. Erickson, Ordered to Die: A History of the Ottoman Army in the First World
War (Westport: Greenwood Press, 2001), p.65.
64 Ibid., pp.59-60.
65 Akçam, A Shameful Act , p.125. 66 Ibid.
67 Ian Kershaw, Hitler, the Germans, and the Final Solution (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), p.96.
68 Akçam, A Shameful Act, p.125. 69 Ibid.
in the ‘rimlands’70 of the empire had become couched as a genuine existential threat.
With the eastern front now vulnerable, and with the Entente navy massing near the Dardenelles not far from Istanbul, the apocalypse for the empire seemed to have finally come; even the usually confident Talaat now sensed “doom.”71
It was in this context that the first centrally organized measures were taken against Armenians, which historians would later regard as the first phase of what would become an overall genocide. One of these measures was immediate: the disarming and assignment to labour battalions of almost all Armenians troops, first in just the Third army, then throughout Anatolia (but usually not further south).72 Most of these
troops had fought loyally for the regime, but were soon to be murdered in their thousands. The demobilization of Third Army Christians does not seem entirely unreasonable under the circumstances, as the Ottoman disaster at Sarıkamış had been “greatly aided by the delaying actions of a[n Armenian] volunteer battalion.”73 The
other immediate measure taken by the regime was also the most portentous and risky decision of all: to open the Pandora’s box of expanding, consolidating and granting virtual autonomy to the Teşkilat-ı Mahsusa - the Special Organization.
Since the previous autumn, çete bands of the SO were increasingly unruly, occasionally out of control, although “acting as part of the army.”74 Some of these
bands went so far as executing Muslims in groups “only because they had appeared ‘suspicious.’”75 Indeed, Lt.Col. Stange admitted in a report that “the armed gangs’
operations and lack of discipline were the cause of continuous friction with the army.”76 Such behavior from the SO and this resultant friction were not beneficial for
the war effort, and some elements within the army general staff command wanted to complained to Enver, who had to “arbitrate the disputes between the two forces.77
The wing of the Special Organization led by Şakir and loyal to the CUP was totally opposed to any concessions to the army, and in a clear sign of its growing autonomy, 70 Taken from Mark Levene, The Crisis of Genocide.
71 Henry Morgenthau, Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story: A Personal Account of the
Armenian Genocide (New York: Cosimo, 2010), p.135.
72 Erickson, p.104.
73 Bloxham, The Great Game of Genocide, p.75. 74 Akçam, From Empire to Republic, p.165.
75 Mehmet Beşikçi, The Ottoman Mobilization of Manpower in the First World War:
Between Voluntarism and Resistance (Leiden: Brill, 2012), p.201. 76 Akçam, A Shameful Act, p.151.
successfully resisted any suggestions of amalgamation.78
In late February 1915, Şakir chaired a meeting where it was decided to release the Special Organization from control of the army, to put the SO çetes and fedayin directly under his control from his base in Erzurum, and to authorize them to receive orders from there rather than Istanbul. “Drafting of the programs should be left up to the local authorities. In particular local delegations should possess the necessary devices.” 79 This essentially gave the SO operational autonomy and flexibility
throughout the empire. When the CUP declared martial law and suspended the Ottoman parliament on 1 March, Şakir returned to Istanbul and convinced his fellow Young Turks that “the Armenians were the clear and present danger to both state and regime and, as such, had to be dealt with.”80 According to Arif Cemal, a high-ranking
officer of the SO, at the meetings of 21-23 March in Istanbul, it was settled that Sakir “would no longer concern himself with the operations aimed at the SO’s foreign enemies, but, rather, turn his attention to the country’s internal foes. Bahaeddin Bey was now convinced…that we had to worry as much about the enemy within as the external foe.”81
2.5 “A Radical New Phase”
The crucial CC meetings in late March went much further than redirecting the SO and giving it operational autonomy. Taner Akçam argues that “these conversations ultimately resulted in the publication of the Law of Deportation [and] it was clear that Dr. Bahaeddin Şakir Bey returned shortly thereafter to the Caucasian front in an entirely new [capacity and] position.”82 Akçam goes even further in ascribing the
seminal importance of these meeting in engaging a comprehensive plan of destruction that had already been prepared
Two separate decisions were most likely made at these meetings in Istanbul in late March…Subsequently, the decision to annihilate the 78 Kevorkian, p.181-82.
79 Akçam, From Empire to Republic, p.165. 80 Levene, The Crisis of Genocide, p.142. 81 Kevorkian, p.197.
82 Akçam, The Young Turks Crime Against Humanity: The Armenian Genocide and Ethnic
Armenians was conveyed to the regions by CUP ….so-called responsible secretaries. One may confidently claim that a dual track mechanism…was redeployed for the deportation and annihilation of the Armenians…a series of comprehensive policies were put into effect almost immediately, giving the distinct impression that preparations for these actions must have been under way long before.”83
The first of these policies was what Ronald Suny refers to as a “radical new phase in the Ottoman program to deal with their Armenian subjects.”84 - the ‘decapitation’ of
the Armenian elites. While the American ambassador was having dinner with Talaat, police were rounding up, arresting and deporting the cultural elite – politicians, journalist, priests, and industrialists – of the Armenian community. When
Morgenthau asked about the comprehensive and seemingly indiscriminate arrests, Talaat was forthcoming: “he admitted that that they had arrested a great many of them…they [the CUP] intend to put them among Turks in the interior where they can do no harm.”85 This first and largest roundup of around 250 Armenian notables from
Istanbul was mostly sent directly to Angora vilayet, where the great majority was murdered by local cadres of the SO in June.86 The fact that they weren’t immediately
killed indicates a certain momentary indecision as to what to do with them in April, and aligns with the acceleration of deportation from April onwards, suggesting that by the summer a firm decision had been made in favour of mass murder.
Simultaneous with this ‘decapitation’ in Istanbul, Talaat was warning his valis (governors) in the vilayets to ensure that “no travel documents or permissions to go abroad whatsoever be given to those Armenians who are known by the government to be suspicious, and especially not to the leaders and prominent members of planning and active committees.”87 In other words, by late April the Armenians were trapped
throughout Anatolia. To initiate the next phase, an “urgent and secret” memorandum was circulated by Talaat giving notice that “a temporary law had been issued on 26 April in accordance with the 24 April decision to conduct a wide-ranging search for weapons.”88 This would give local authorities a pretext to begin an intrusive and
83 Ibid.
84 Ronald Suny, They May Live in the Desert But Nowhere Else: A History of the Armenian
Genocide (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015), p.251.
85 Ara Sarafian (ed.), United States Diplomacy on the Bosphorus; The Diaries of
Ambassador Morgenthau, 1913-1916 (London: Taderon, 2004), pp.215-16.
86Grigoris Balakian, Armenian Golgotha: A Memoir of the Armenian Genocide, 1915– 1918. Translated by Peter Balakian and Aris Sevag (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009), p.44.
87Akçam, Young Turks Crimes Against Humanity, p.186.
ultimately destructive approach in dealing with the Armenian ‘question.’ In Diyarbakir vilayet, this central decision gave the vali, longtime CUP stalwart and fanatic Dr. Mehmet Reşid, his cue to start aggressively hounding Armenians under the pretext of looking for deserters and hidden arms caches. According to Hans-Lukas Kieser, Reşid immediately assembled and directed a “strike force, probably linked to the Teşkilat-ı Mahsusa”89 that went far beyond this first initiative. According to a
Venezuelan mercenary who was in Diyarbakir at that moment, Talaat sent Reşid a three-word telegram: “Burn-Destroy-Kill” (“yak-vur-oldur”)90 which over the next
weeks and months resulted in the mass murder of tens of thousands of Armenians.91
This was just the beginning of an infamous reign of terror, whereby Reşid would earn the sobriquet ‘Butcher of Diyarbakir’. Further north, in Trabzon vilayet, a similarly ambitious, fanatical and unscrupulous vali was readying himself and his own ‘task force’ for a devastating assault on the local Armenians there. Cemal Azmi, who would soon be known as the ‘Butcher of Trabzon,’92 undoubtedly had similar orders
from Talaat and by the end of June would act on them. We therefore see that with such powerful CUP cadres now in place throughout the empire, the center of power would be able to impose its will with virtually no resistance.
89Jan-Lukas Kieser, ‘From Patriotism to Mass Murder’ in A Question of Genocide: Armenians and Turks at the End of the Ottoman Empire. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), p.139.
90 Rafael de Nogales Rafael de. Four Years Beneath the Crescent, translated by Muna Lee (Reading: Taderon Press, 2011; memoir first published in 1924), p.125.
91Üngör, The Making of Modern Turkey, p.71. The entire mass murder process is covered in grim and exhaustive detail in Chapter Two, pp.55-106
92 This nickname has shown up in several documents and commentaries. I was particularly struck when I asked a Trabzon resident about Cemal Azmi; his immediate response was, “Oh you mean Kasap (Butcher) Cemal!” Apparently Azmi’s infamy has remained intact for a century. Nonetheless, an elementary school was named after the Butcher in a suburb of Trabzon in 2003!
Chapter Three
‘Deportation’ and Mass Murder in Trabzon
Figure 2 Map of Trabzon vilayet, 1898
Authorities drowned a large number of Armenian adults and then gathered their 600 orphaned children into an old Greek monastery…the vali, Cemal Azmi, instructed his police force to empty the monastery by drowning the children in the
Black Sea…Azmi reportedly joked that the fishing would be extra productive that year thanks to all the extra “fish feed.”93
3.1 Introduction
Trabzon represents a useful regional study for the Armenian genocide for a number of reasons. First, there was a dedicated session of the postwar Istanbul trials that dealt specifically with crimes committed in Trabzon in 1915-16. These have provided strong evidence and an invaluable historical record on which to chart key dynamics, activities and the relationship to the centre in Istanbul. Second, there was a significant foreign presence there, with several consulates and business concerns. These were staffed by numerous witnesses who committed their experiences and observations to paper for posterity. Collectively, these too represent a solid source base from which to piece together the destructive processes of the summer of 1915. Third, there was a significant participation of the Special Organization in Trabzon
vilayet which affords us a valuable look at the involvement of a paramilitary force that
has too often been obscured by a lack of documentary evidence. Last, the extremely (pro)active participation of Cemal Azmi, the vali and Yenibahçeli Nail, the CUP’s responsible secretary (Katibi Mesul), in enabling and directing the genocide that summer shows that the cooperation of the representatives of the ‘center’ – the regime based in Istanbul – was absolutely fundamental to its implementation.
Trabzon vilayet
94 was situated on the Black Sea near the border with Russia, witha long coast and rugged inland mountains. As an ancient port city that was already prominent on the fabled Silk Road and developed by the Genoese, Trabzon boasted an ancient Greek population as well as a sizable, established Armenian minority that gave this province a decidedly cosmopolitan flavour. It had many international trading posts with attendant representatives and diplomats, several of whom would attest to 93 Bartrop, Paul R. & Jacobs, Steven Leonard.(eds) Modern Genocide: The Definitive
Resource and Document Collection, Volume I (Santa Barbara:ABC-CLIO, 2015) p.109; also,
one of the ‘Operation Nemesis’ assassins, while undercover in Berlin after the war, had dinner with Azmi and claimed that he boasted that “the fishes ate well that year.”Bogosian,
Operation Nemesis, p.374
94 “At the turn of the century, the empire was organized into provinces (vilayet) with
governors (vali), districts (sancak or liva) with district governors (mutasarrıf), counties (kaza) with mayors (kaymakam), and communes (nahiye) with directors (müdür).” Üngör, ‘CUP Rule in Diyarbakir,’ p.21.
the events of 1915. The Armenian community was not amongst the largest in the empire but it did enjoy a relatively privileged and affluent status commensurate with its residing in a trading and manufacturing region.95 Armenians of Trabzon tended to
be better off than those further south and east; they were largely middle class artisans and farmers, and even quite wealthy traders and professionals.96 Because of this,
there was generally less support for Armenian revolutionary parties than in the ‘traditional’ Armenian areas further south and east, such at Erzurum, Bitlis, Muş and Van.97 These factors, plus the Trabzon Armenian community’s erstwhile attempt to
prove its commitment to the CUP regime by its high rate of enlistment in the Ottoman army during the Balkan Wars may have given them a sense of relative security going into 1915.98 Also, since there was a sizable Pontic Greek community in Trabzon, the
Armenians were perhaps less conspicuous as the only Christian minority in the area. In other parts of the Ottoman East, Armenians were far more noticeable in this regard, and had much greater friction with the Kurds, for example. Trabzon vilayet was composed of four sancaks (districts): Trabzon, Gumushane, Samsun and Lazistan. Out of a total population of close to a million in 1914, the Greeks made up around 180,000 and the Armenians between 70,000 and 80,000.99
3.2. The mood changes in Trabzon 1914-1915
It appears that in February 1914 a noticeable shift emerged in official treatment of Christians, as “instructions from Istanbul” specifically called for a “boycott [of] Greek and Armenian merchants in Trebizond.”100 As the biggest Turkish port on the Black
Sea, Trabzon also had primary strategic importance – and sensitivity. As we have seen, Bahaeddin Şakir was busy organizing and consolidating paramilitary groups under a his authority, especially in the provinces around his base at Erzurum. Indeed, Şakir had already been designated as the “chief of the SO… to create an organization
95
Stanford Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey: Volume 2, Reform,Revolution, and Republic: The Rise of Modern Turkey 1808-1975, p.260.
96 Simon Payaslian, The History of Armenia: From the Origins to the Present (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), p.108.
97 Suny, p.86.
98 Kevorkian, The Armenian Genocide, p.267. 99 Ibid.,p.924.
among Islamic peoples and to exploit this in time of war.”101 Trabzon would be an
ideal area from which to engage the proactive strategy of sowing confusion and mischief within Russian borderlands. In fact, the Austrian consul in Trabzon reported on 2 September that “one hundred fighters had entered Russia to start a rebellion.”102
This was a full two months before the Ottomans attacked the Russian Black Sea fleet, instigating open war, which gives us a clear sense of CUP intentions for the SO: a ‘loose cannon’ operation geared to act in the party’s interests.
While SO supervisor, Yusuf Rıza and Yenibahçeli Nail represented CUP/CC authority in Trabzon, ultimate local political power belonged to Cemal Azmi Bey, who was appointed its vali by Talaat in July 1914.103 Azmi was a trained lawyer who
joined the Young Turk movement just before the overthrow of Sultan Abdülhamid in 1908. He then proved his dependability as vali of Bolu and then Konya; he remained
vali of Trabzon until February 1917, when he went to Berlin on unspecified business.
He would be condemned to death in absentia at both the Istanbul and Trabzon post war criminal trials. Although he initially escaped justice, he would be felled by an Armenian assassin, along with Şakir and Talaat, in Berlin in 1922.104 One of Azmi’s
first initiatives as vali was to help with Nail’s SO recruitment drive at Şakir’s behest.105 He used his authority to grant amnesty to outlaws who lived in the Pontic
Mountains on condition that they recognize Riza and Nail as formal fedayi leaders in the expanding local SO branch.106 The seminal role of of Azmi is underscored by
Taner Akçam, who argues that “due to the importance and secrecy of these [CC/SO] policies, it was necessary to appoint trustworthy officials...Cemal Azmi Bey...who would later play a very important role in the Armenian genocide, was appointed governor-general of Trabzon, which had been selected as a second base of operations.”107
101 Akçam, A Shameful Act, p.132. 102 Ibid.
103 Kevorkian, p.468.
104 see Eric Bogosian, Operation Nemesis: The Assassination Plot that Avenged the
Armenian Genocide (New York: Little, Brown and Co., 2015)
105 Kevorkian, The Armenian Genocide, p.468. 106 Akçam and Dadrian, Judgment at Istanbul, p.140. 107 Akçam, A Shameful Act, p.132.
3.3 The contours of genocide in Trabzon
As we have seen, on 24 April the CUP set in motion a meticulously planned operation to ‘decapitate’ the Armenian cultural, political and economic elites, starting in the capital, Istanbul. Talaat declared that since “the Ottoman state could no longer tolerate any longer the existence of the [Armenian] committees which constitute the sources of conspiracy, [he had] made the necessary preparations.”108 The American ambassador, Henry Morgenthau, had dinner with Talaat that very evening and among his recollections of that time was being told that the Armenians, everywhere in the empire were “not to be trusted…the only way they to defend ourselves against them is to deport them….[Talaat] claimed that he had every reason to fear that they would start an insurrection against the government.”109 Talaat chillingly, and as we will see,
cunningly and according to plan, asked Morgenthau “that the insurance premiums due to Armenians from American companies be paid to the Turks since the Armenians no longer had any need for them.”110 Apparently by this point the Ottoman leadership
decided to set in motion what Michael Mann refers to as “Plan D” of the CUP leadership, the permanent removal of a very large segment of Armenians from Anatolia.111 By the end of June, hundreds of these prominent Armenians had been
murdered mostly in Ayaş and Çankırı (Angora vilayet), driving the destruction process forward.112
Although the ‘decapitation’ process took some time to reach Trabzon, on 2 May Cemal Azmi, doubtlessly given his cue by Talat, ordered his gendarmerie to conduct a methodical search of Armenians’ homes throughout the vilayet, on the pretext of “looking for possible deserters, arms, and ‘Russian spies.’”113 If the object of this
operation was to create an atmosphere of fear among the Armenians, it seemed to have worked. This ploy was of course given credence by reports of arrests and deportations taking place throughout Anatolia, of which they were surely aware. In desperation, a group of leading Armenians had a meeting on 17 May with Azmi with 108 Suny, p.185.
109 Henry Morgenthau, Ambassador Morgenthau's Story: A Personal Account of the
Armenian Genocide (New York: Cosimo, 2010), pp.224-25.
110 Ibid., p.228.
111 Mann, Dark Side of Democracy, p.149.
112 Akçam,’The Chilingirian Murder: A Case Study from the 1915 Roundup of Armenian Intellectuals’ Holocaust and Genocide Studies 25.1 (2011), p.127-143.
a proactive offer, pledging that they would sign over “all their real estate and movable assets if the authorities limited themselves to imprisoning them under the surveillance of gendarmes.”114 Apparently, Azmi was sufficiently aware of CUP plans and
‘generously’ declined the offer; there would be no need to make a ‘deal.’ The Armenians fears were well-founded: a few weeks later, Azmi ordered his gendarmes to escort the Armenian primate (bishop), Kework Turian, to Erzerum “in order to give testimony,” at a courts-martial; he was soon murdered by his gendarme ‘escort,’ as Lt. Col. Stange reported: “The Bishop of Trapezunt was summoned to appear before a court-martial in Erserum and was strangulated on his way there, together with his guards.”115 By murdering the primate, Azmi signaled the start of his own
‘decapitation’ of local elites.
The week after Turian was murdered, Şakir arrived in Trabzon to meet with the local political leadership. According to witnesses, “the vali [Azmi], after holding a long conversation with Şakir, who had arrived from Erzerum, issued orders to expel the Armenians.”116 One states that Şakir arrived in Trabzon “with a sealed
envelope....The deportation committee then went to work in line with the instructions contained in the envelope.”117Judging by what immediately happened following his
one-day visit, one can assume that Şakir emphasized the need for a comprehensive and quick resolution of Trabzon’s ‘problem’ of Armenian elites. On 24 June forty-two leading Armenians, including the local political leaders, businessmen, and teachers, were summoned to Azmi’s konak (governing residence) and informed that they were to be “immediately transferred to Samsun for an investigation already in progress.”118
The German Consul in Trabzon, Heinrich Bergfeld simply reported to the Embassy in Istanbul that On 24June the local leaders of the Armenian committee were arrested and exiled to the interior of the country via Samsun.”119 They never made it to Samsun
- it was a euphemistic ruse; the CUP and its cadres had become experts at inventing and disseminating this linguistic device. At the 7 April 1919 sixth session of the trial of Trabzon criminals, a representative of the Singer Co., Louis Vidal, testified that in late June 1915 he sawthe forty two men put on a “barge” near Trabzon and then 114 Ibid., p.469.
115 Gust, [1915-08-23-DE-013].
116 Kevorkian, The Armenian Genocide, p.469. 117 Ibid.
118 Ibid.
drowned.120 In a remarkable and horrifying addendum, Vidal went on to say that
one of these Armenians managed to swim ashore...He reported that all of those who had been with him had been drowned… The man took refuge with a sailor named Bedros before ‘the police then transferred him to the hospital, where he was poisoned by Ali Saib,’” the director of the Trabzon Health Department, as member of the medical staff, der Tavitian, informed him.121
Also at the same trial session, two civil servants, Nâzım Bey, and Dr. Avni Bey, corroborated this account of drowning Trabzon’s Armenian elite.122 With these
potential local leaders gone, the remaining Armenians were more vulnerable. In Trabzon as elsewhere in Anatolia, this initial process of destruction was just the beginning of a rapidly accelerating initiative.
In late June, soon after the ‘decapitation’ of leading Armenians, Şakir again visited Trabzon; once again Azmi held another meeting with his officials representing all of the kazas (townships) of the vilayet. Here Azmi apparently stated his intention to remove the Armenians from their homes and communities and massacre them all just outside the city limits; but aware of foreign witnesses, he draped the deportations in a semblance of legality. Thus, Kevorkian concludes, “He complied with the
recommendations of the Ittihad’s central committee.”123 This compliance enabled the
implementation of a centrally organized program, which through the Ministry of Interior’s Directorate for the Settlement of Tribes and Immigrants (İAMM), was “supposedly dictated by …military necessity.”124 Although a general order of
deportation had been circulated by Talaat on 26 May,125 the decision of precisely how to comply with this general order lay exclusively in the hands of the local CUP representatives. While Talaat and Şakir may have decided and disseminated key national decisions, local CUP and SO cadres held the particulars of life and death for those Armenians within their jurisdictions. Azmi, Nail, Mehmed Ali (president of the local Red Crescent), Talat Bey (commander of the local gendarmerie), and Dr. Vasfi 120 Report at the fourth session of the trial of Trebizond, 3 April 1919/ La Renaissance, no. 109, 8 April 1919.
121 Report at the fourth session of the trial of Trebizond, 3 April 1919. 122 Dadrian and Akçam. Judgment at Istanbul, p.240.
123 Kevorkian, The Armenian Genocide, p.469.
124 Matthias Bjørnlund,‘A Fate Worse than Dying: Sexual Violence during the Armenian Genocide” in Dagmar Herzog, Brutality and Desire: War and Sexuality in Europe’s
Twentieth Century (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), p.19.
