0081) Armenian collaboration with invading Russian armies

Source: Stanford J Shaw & Ezel Kural Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey (Volume IIl ?: Reform, Revolution & Republic: The Rise of Modern Turkey, 1808-1975). (London, Cambridge University Press 1977).

Professor Shaw's home in Los Angeles was BOMBED by Armenians on October 4, 1977 for writing this history that deviated from the Armenians' script. George Lucas credited Professor Shaw as consultant in the only dramatic American television production Holdwater has seen, where the Turks did not come across negatively.

The following excerpts are from Pages 315-317

The Armenian leaders told Enver only that they wanted to remain neutral, but their sympathy for the Russians was evident, and in fact soon after the meeting, several prominent Ottoman Armenians, including a former member of parliament, slipped away to the Caucasus to collaborate with Russian military officials, making it clear that the Armenians would do everything they could to frustrate Ottoman military action ....

Still Enver decided that Ottoman security forces were strong enough to prevent any Armenian sabotage, and preparations were made for a winter assault. Meanwhile, Czar Nicholas II himself came to the Caucasus to make final plans for cooperation with the Armenians against the Ottomans, with the president of the Armenian National Bureau in Tiflis declaring in response: "From all countries Armenians are hurrying to enter the ranks of the glorious Russian Army, with their blood to serve the victory of Russian arms... Let the Russian flag wave freely over the Dardanelles and the Bosporus. Let, with Your will, great Majesty, the peoples remaining under the Turkish yoke receive freedom. Let the Armenian people of Turkey who have suffered for the faith of Christ receive resurrection for a new free life under the protection of Russia."

Armenians again flooded into the czarist armies. Preparations were made to strike the Ottomans from the rear, and the czar returned to St. Petersburg confident that the day finally had come for him to reach Istanbul.

In the initial stages of the Caucasus campaign the Russians had demonstrated the best means of organizing a campaign by evacuating the Armenians from their side of the border to clear the area for battle, with the Armenians going quite willingly in the expectation that a Russian victory would soon enable them not merely to return to their homes but also to occupy those of the Turks across the border. Enver followed this example to prepare the Ottoman side and to resist the expected Russian invasion. Armenian leaders in any case now declared their open support of the enemy, and there seemed no other alternative (to relocation). It would be impossible to determine which of the Armenians would remain loyal and which would follow the appeals of their leaders. As soon as spring came, then, in mid-May 1915, orders were issued to evacuate the entire Armenian population from the provinces of Van, Bitlis, and Erzurum, to get them away from all areas where they might undermine the Ottoman campaigns against Russia or against the British in Egypt, with arrangements made to settle them in towns and camps in the Mosul area of northern Iraq. In addition, Armenians residing in the countryside (but not the cities) of the Cilician districts as well as those of north Syria were to be sent to central Syria for the same reason. Specific instructions were issued for the army to protect the Armenians against nomadic attacks and to provide them with sufficient food and other supplies to meet their needs during the march and after they were settled. . .

In April 1915, even before the deportation orders were issued, Dashnaks from Russian Armenia organized a revolt in the city of Van, whose 33,789 Armenians comprised 42.3 percent of the population, closest to an Armenian majority of any city in the Empire...

Leaving Erivan on April 28, 1915, only a day after the deportation orders had been issued in Istanbul and long before news of them could have reached the least, (Armenian volunteers) reached Van on May 14 and organized and carried out a general slaughter of the local Muslim population during the next two days while the small Ottoman garrison had to retreat to the southern side of the lake.

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