IV. L’HEURE DES BILANS AU LENDEMAIN DE LA GRANDE GUERRE (en)

IV -THE IMMEDIATE CONSEQUENCES OF THE GENOCIDE IN THE AFTERMATH OF WORLD WAR I

1. THE SITUATION OF THE SURVIVORS

Survivors identified at the end of the war may be classified into two main categories:

> thousands of children and girls kidnapped by Bedouin tribes who were recovered after the armistice of October 1918;

> over a hundred thousand deportees, mostly from Cilicia, whom British forces discovered in an indescribable state during their slow conquest of Palestine and Syria, from the end of 1917 and into 1918.

Tens of thousands of survivors and refugees were also found in the Caucasus and Persia.

Armenians repatriated to their former cities, towns and villages (c. February 1919) According to the Bureau of Information of the Armenian Patriarchate of Constantinople
Places	Number of repatriated Armenians
Constantinople	470
Edirne	2,355
Erzerum	3,193
Adana	45,075
Angora	1,735
Aydın	132
Bitlis	762
Bursa	13,855
Diyarbekir	195
Sıvas	2,897
Trebizond	2,103
Kastamonu	0
Konya	10,012
Mamuret ul-Aziz	1,992
Van	732
Eskişehir	216
Erzincan	7
Urfa	394
Içil	0
Izmit	13,672
Bolu	0
Teke	0
Canik	801
Çatalca	0
Ayntab	430
Karahisar	298
Dardanelles	222
Karasi	899
Kayseri	47
Kütahya	721
Menteşe	0
Niğde	0
Total	103,215

Survivors of the Genocide: between hope and disillusionment

Genocide survivors were scattered in Arab lands, often abandoned to their fate. Most of them were women and children who hoped to return home. By January 1919, a vast repatriation campaign to Cilicia began under the direction of the French, which had then taken military and administrative control of the region. However, in October 1921, France signed an agreement with Kemalist Turkey and ceded Cilicia, a decision which generated a new exodus of the Armenian population to Syria and Lebanon.

Chronology of the situation after the war

Exodus of Armenians at the railway station in Adana (Paul du Véou, La Passion de la Cilicie, Paris : Geuthner, 1954).

1917: The seize of Baghdad (March) and Jerusalem (December) by British troops. The discovery of numerous abandoned Armenian children. The start of gathering Armenian orphans and establishing the first orphanages.

October 31, 1918: Signing of the Armistice of Moudros. Syria and Cilicia are occupied by Allied forces. Governments and public opinion in Europe become fully aware of the extent of the destruction of the Ottoman Armenians.

January 1919: Creation of the central division for the repatriation of Armenian deportees; the start of the transfer to Cilicia of deportees gathered in camps in Aleppo, Beirut and Damascus, with the financial support of France.

February 1, 1919: The establishment of a French administration in Cilicia, based in Adana.

February 1919: The opening of the first shelter for surviving and abandoned Armenian women in Aleppo.

October 20, 1921: The end of the Franco-Turkish agreement in Ankara, which ceded Cilicia to Turkey. The start of the mass exodus of the Armenians of Cilicia to Syria and Lebanon.

December 1921-January 1922: The establishment of refugee camps in Beirut, Alexandretta, Aleppo and Damascus.

March-September 1922: The evacuation to Syria and Lebanon of 10,017 Armenian orphans under the protection of the Near East Relief in the Eastern provinces of Turkey. A network of orphanages run by Armenian and Western organizations is established in Syria and Lebanon.

July 23, 1923: Treaty of Lausanne, which put an end to Armenian hopes for a possible gathering of survivors in a new national territory.

2. GATHERING AND REHABILITATING: A PRIORITY

Upon the entry of British troops into Turkish territory, Armenian organizations tried to gather abandoned women and children and establish them in group homes. These humanitarian operations to support orphans, women and children taken into Turkish, Kurdish and Bedouin families were the priority of Armenian and Western organizations engaged in offering relief and assistance to genocide survivors.

Armenians in Anatolia on the eve of the Treaty of Sèvres According to the Bureau of Information of the Armenian Patriarchate of Constantinople
City, province (vilayet) ou district (sanjak)	Estimated number of Armenians
Constantinople	150,000
Vilayet of Edirne	6,000
Mutesarifat of Izmit	20,000
Vilayet of Bursa	11,000
Sanjak of Bilecik	4,500
Sanjak of Karasi	5,000
Sanjak of Afyonkarahisar	7,000
Vilayet of Aydın	10,000
Vilayet of Kastamonu and Bolu	8,000
Sanjak of Kirşehir	2,500
Sanjak of Yozgat	3,000
Sanjak of Angora	4,000
Vilayet of Konya	10,000
Sanjak of Sıvas	12,000
Sanjak de Tokat	1,800
Sanjak of Amasia	3,000
Sanjak of şabinkarahisar	1,000
Sanjak of Trébizonde	0
Sanjak of Lazistan	10,000
Sanjak of Gümüşhane	0
Sanjak of Canik	5,000
Vilayet of Erzerum	1,500
Van (town only)	500
Vilayet of Bitlis	0
Vilayet of Dyarbekir	3,000
Sanjak of Harpout [Kharpert]	30,000
Sanjak of Malatia	2,000
Sanjak of Dersim	3,000
Vilayet of Adana	150,000
Sanjak of Alep	5,000
Sanjak of Ayntab	52,000
Sanjak of Urfa	9,000
Sanjak of Marache	10,000
Jérusalem	2,000
Damas	400
Beyrouth	1,000
Hauran	400
Total	543,600

3. PUNISHING THE PERPETRATORS: THE UNFINISHED TASK

Soghomon Tehlirian (1897-1960) shortly after his acquittal for the murder of the former Ottoman Minister of the Interior and head of the Committee of Union and Progress, Mehmed Talât, in 1921. (AGBU Nubar Library, Paris)Following the Armistice of Mudros (October 31, 1918), while the main Unionist leaders had already fled to Germany, an investigative commission was established by imperial decree on November 21, 1918. Several courts-martial were set up to try the Young Turk criminals.

The main trial targeting the organizers of the genocide, all members of the Council of Ministers and the Central Committee of CUP began on April 27, 1919 before the special court-martial in Istanbul. The twenty-three members of the CUP Central Committee and its party executives should have been tried by this special court, but twelve of them – including Mehmed Talât, İsmail Enver, Cemal Ahmed, Bahaeddin Şakir and Nâzım – had fled abroad. When the “trial of the Unionists” started, only second-rate officials were present: Halil [Menteşe], Midhat Şükrü, Ziya Gökalp, Kara Kemal, Yusuf Rıza, Said Halim (the former Grand Vizier), etc.

Ultimately, only three low ranking actors were sentenced to death and executed, the main defendants being sentenced to death in abstentia. Measures taken by the British and French governments to bring these criminals before an international “high court” were unsuccessful. Armenian activists then planned Operation Nemesis, an undercover operation to track down and assassinate former Unionist leaders in exile.

The most emblematic case concerned Mehmed Talât, the main orchestrator of the Armenian genocide, assassinated in Berlin by Soghomon Tehlirian on March 15, 1921.

4. EARLY MEDIA COVERAGE OF THE GENOCIDE:

AURORA MARDIGANIAN’S STORY AND RAVISHED ARMENIA

The movie, Ravished Armenia, inspired by her story, produced in Hollywood in 1919

Poster of the movie "Ravished Armenia". (DR)Born in 1901 in Tchemeshgadzak (Çemişgezek) in the north of the vilayet of Kharpert/Mamuret ul-Aziz, Aurora Mardiganian experienced the common fate of Armenian deportees. Her convoy went through the largest transit camp and site of slaughter, located ten kilometers south of Malatya, on the plain of Fırıncılar, at the entrance to the gorges of Kahta, where brigades of the Special Organization committed unspeakable crimes during the summer of 1915.

Surviving the genocide, Aurora Mardiganian published her story in 1919 in the United States. The Armenians in California chose her as the heroine of the film Ravished Armenia, shot in Hollywood in 1919, with the intention of informing the general audience about the crimes committed against the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire. Based in California, where she established a new family, she died in 1994.

For Copyrights issues, we did not wish to insert the movie on our Website. Kindly follow the link below on YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTnCaW-Uo_s