2705) Massacres By The Armenians Against The Turks, General Mayewsky

CONTENTS
PREFACE . . 5
INTRODUCTION . . . 7
SUMMARY (in French) . . . 9
ARMENIANS . . . 11
Passages from M. Cambon’s report . . 12
Two other reports of M. Cambon . . . . 13
COMMITTEES . . .. . . 14
The Sasun events . . . . 16
The Zeytun (Suleymanh) events . . . 17
The June 1896 Van events . . .. . . 19
The raid of Ottoman Bank . . . 22
The consequence of Armenian rebel activities .. . 25
CATHOLIC ARMENIANS . . . . . . 26
Tribes . . . . . . .. . . . 28
Relations between Turks and Armenians . . . . . 28
RUSSIAN ORIGINAL TEXT . . .. . . 33. .

ISBN 975-7430-00-5

PREFACE

The Armenians, who had lived with the Turks for many years, enjoying all kinds of rights and freedom and many privileges and bestowals, namely social, military, religious, economical, had turned from a loyal subject into a rebellion, which Russian General Mayewsky had attributed to mainly three reasons: Armenians going too far in politics, development of nationalism and independence speculations amongst them and spread of those speculations by means of monk’s efforts by the provocation of the West. The committees and associations had realized turning of this rebel behavior into action again by the materialistic and spiritual supports of the West which lead their community from one catastrophe to another.

These attempted activities in which Ottoman’s tolerance, patience and great state tradition had been tried to be exploited and by the way of Christian fanaticism being incited as well. The price of rebellions, murders, massacres had been always tried to be invoiced to Turks and Press had been directed in this manner by means of propaganda. However, the realities which had been attempted to be distorted, had appeared sooner or later and reflected by foreign authors, investigation committees and conscientious people. Here, one of these is the Russian General Mayewsky.

Mayewsky serving as Ambassador firstly in Van later in Erzurum had been presented the Russian General Staff his article as report. This report being put into a book format had been published as restricted in few copies. This book called the “Statistic of Van and Bitlis Provinces” had been translated from the Russian language into the Ottoman Turkish language and had been pressed at Military Printing Office in 1330 (1914) by Cavalryman major Mehmet Sadik, one of the officers from General Headquarters Intelligence Department. The parts related directly with Armenians, Russian original being in Russian and in French under the title of “Les Massacres d’Armenie Statistique des Provinces de Van et de Bitlis” had been published as a separate book in 1916 and pressed facsimile by Ministry of Foreign Affairs a couple of years ago.

My dear Prof. Dr. Mustafa KAFALI, whom we wish to express our appreciation and not being spared his help, was so kind as to help me in making comparison with the Russian language of the article from which we had translated. Here I gratefully acknowledge himself.

The fact that the article, as it was yesterday maintaining it’s vitality today as well, had been written by a foreign and from a neutral point of view and shaped from an official report had set forth its reality and persuasiveness and had shone some light on the facts which had been tried to be introduced incorrectly for years.

April 24, 1991 Prof. Dr. Azmi SUSLU

INTRODUCTION

This study including an extremely important historical article, was a military statistic of Van and Bitlis provinces, which had been prepared and presented to the Russian General Staff by General Mayewsky.

The author had served as an Ambassador of Russia in Van for a period more than six years, hereafter in Erzurum.

This article had evaluated generally geographical position, natural resources, way of transportation, in a word, all kinds of intelligence which may be useful for a General Staff. Author had reserved a special section to various components which constitutes themselves, especially to the relations between the public of the region and Armenians, and the statistic of these two provinces’ public with whom he was in direct contact. When he had investigated only Armenian rebellions, his judgement about them is more like in a convicting manner.

As will be seen later in this report, General Mayewsky had attributed all the responsibilities of the experiences that Turkish Armenians had to face, definitely to rebellions who were the members of political committees and further to England who provoked them.

Author has been attributing especially to “Blue Book” in English and “Livre Jaune” in French amongst a lot of evidence which he had mentioned.

Having presented his article to the General Staff instead of his public, the information given by the General shouldn’t be accused with partisanship.

Author had set forth his opinion intentionally and in a completely independent manner by means of investigations which he made directly in original places.