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Examining a chapter from:
ARMENIA
AND THE WAR
AN ARMENIAN'S POINT OF VIEW
WITH AN APPEAL TO BRITAIN AND
THE COMING PEACE CONFERENCE
BY
A. P. HACOBIAN.
(Avetoon Pesak Hacobian), 1918.
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I HAVE spoken earlier in these pages of the services of the
Armenians to the Allied cause in the war. What are these services?
The Armenian name has been so long and so often associated with massacre that it has given
rise to the general but utterly unfounded belief by those who have not gone deeper into
the matter, that Armenians are devoid of physical courage and allow themselves to be
butchered like sheep.[14] Where this belief is not
based upon ignorance of the facts and circumstances, it is, I am bound to say, a
particularly dastardly piece of calumny upon a people who have groaned for centuries under
a brutal tyrant's heel, with an indomitable spirit that has ever been and is even to-day
the Turk's despair. The struggle that has gone on for five or six centuries between
Armenian and Turk symbolizes, perhaps better than any event in history, the invincibility
of the spirit of Christianity and liberty and the ideal of nationality against
overwhelming odds of ruthless tyranny, the savagery of the Dark Ages and the unscrupulous
and mendacious exploitation of religious passion. That struggle has been as unequal as can
well be imagined, but we have not permitted the forces of darkness to triumph over the
spirit of Light and Liberty, though the price paid has come very near that of our
annihilation. Nevertheless, we have been able, in this worldwide struggle, not dissimilar
to our own long struggle in the moral issues involved, to render services to the cause of
the Allies, which is the cause of Right and Justice, and therefore our cause also, quite
out of proportion, in their effect, to our numbers as a race or our contribution of
fighting men as compared with the vast armies engaged, although that contribution has been
by no means negligible.
On the eve of Turkey's entry into the war the Young Turks employed every conceivable means
— persuasion, cajolery, intimidation, the promise of a large autonomous Armenia, etc.—
to induce the Armenian party leaders to prevail upon the Russian Armenians to join
themselves in a mass rally to the Turkish flag against Russia. They sent a number of
emissaries to Russian Armenia with the same object. The Turk must have a peculiar
understanding of human nature, and not much sense of humour, to have the naiveté to make
such overtures to Armenians after having persecuted and harried and massacred them for
centuries. All the Armenian leaders promised was a correct attitude as Ottoman subjects.
They would do neither more nor less than what they were bound to do by the laws of the
country. They could not interfere with the freedom of action of their compatriots in the
Caucasus who owed allegiance to Russia. They kept their promise scrupulously in the first
months of the war. Armenian conscripts went to the dépôts without enthusiasm. How could
it be otherwise? What claim had the Turks upon the sympathy and support of their Armenian
subjects? Is sympathy won by tyranny, or loyalty bred by massacre? They (the Armenians)
were placed in a most difficult position. They were naturally reluctant to fight against
the Russians, and the position was aggravated by the fact that the Russian Caucasian army
was largely composed of Russian Armenians. But in spite of these sentimental difficulties,
mobilization was completed without any serious trouble.
Soon, however, Armenians began to desert in large numbers; the Young Turks had joined the
war against their wish and advice; they had not their heart in the business, and, last,
but not least, they were harried, ill-treated and insulted by their Turkish officers and
comrades at every turn: there were exceptions, of course, but that was the position
generally in the closing months of 1914. Let me add that there were large numbers of
Turkish deserters also, and that the Armenian leaders did all they could to send the
deserters of their own nationality back to the ranks, doing so forcibly in some cases.
Then came the defeat of the Turks at Sarikamysh and the ejection of Djevdet Bey and his
force from Azerbaijan. On his return to Van, Djevdet Bey told his friends: "It is the
Armenians much more than the Russians who are fighting us."
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The massacres and deportations began soon after the
collapse of the Turkish invasion of the Caucasus and Northern Persia, and it is only
after it was seen clearly that the Turks were determined to deport or destroy them
all that the Armenians in many places took up arms in self-defence. There was no
armed resistance before that, and the Turkish and German allegations of an Armenian
revolt are a barefaced invention to justify a crime, a tithe of which not one but a
hundred revolts cannot justify or palliate. This is proved beyond all question by
Mr. Toynbee's concise and illuminating historical summary at the end of the
Blue-book on the Treatment of Armenians by the Turks during the war. There was no
revolt. But when the Armenians were driven to self-defence under the menace of
extermination, they fought with what arms they could scrape together, with the
courage of desperation. In Shahin-Karahissar they held out for three months and were
only reduced by artillery brought from Erzeroum. In Van and Jebel-Mousa they
defended themselves against heavy odds until relieved by the Russians and the
Armenian volunteers in the first case, and rescued by French and British cruisers in
the second. The Turkish force sent against the insurgents of Jebel-Mousa was
detached from the army intended for the attack on the Suez Canal.
Of course ill-armed, poorly equipped bands without artillery, wanting in almost all
necessaries of modern warfare, brave as they may be, cannot possibly maintain a
prolonged resistance against superior forces of regulars well supplied with
artillery, machine-guns and all that is needed in war. Nevertheless, some of these
bands seem to have succeeded in holding out for many months, and it is believed in
the Caucasus that there are groups of armed Armenians still holding out in some
parts of the higher mountains behind the Turkish lines. [15] It will be remembered that some weeks ago — I do not recall
the date — a Constantinople telegram reprinted in The Times from German papers
stated that there were 30,000 armed Armenian rebels in the vilayet of Sivas. This is
an obvious exaggeration, and it may simply mean that a considerable number of
Armenians were still defending themselves against the menace of massacre. When the
Russian army entered Trebizond a band of some 400 armed Armenians came down from the
mountains and surrendered themselves to the Russians. Quite recently a band of
seventy men cut through the Turkish lines and gained the Russian lines in the
neighbourhood of Erzinjian.
The Turks have repeatedly declared that the "Armenian revolt" threatened
to place their army between two fires. The particle of truth that there is in this
assertion is, as may be judged by the facts so far known as cited above, that the
Armenian resistance to massacre and deportation proved to be more serious than they
had anticipated, and that they had to detach large numbers of troops and in some
cases artillery and machine-guns to keep these "rebels" in check. It is
consequently undeniable that Armenian armed resistance to deportation and massacre
has been a considerable hindrance to the full development of Turkish military power
during the war and has, in that way, been of material, though, indirect assistance
to the Allied forces operating against the Turks. To this may be added the
demoralizing effect that the deplorable state of affairs created by the Turks in
their dominions must have exercised on the morale of their people.
Such in general outline have been the services, of the Turkish
Armenians to the Allied cause. It is not my purpose here to endeavour to appraise
the possibly ill-concealed, but not by any means ostentatious or provocative,
sympathy of the Armenians for the Allies, upon the sinister designs of the Young
Turks. I will content myself with the description of a significant cartoon that
appeared early in the war in the Turkish comic paper Karagöz in Constantinople. The
cartoon depicted two Turks discussing the war. "Where do you get your war news
from?" asked Turk number one. "I do not need war news," replied Turk
number two; "I can follow the course of the war by the expression on the faces
of the Armenians I meet. When they are happy I know the Allies are winning, when
depressed I know the Germans have had a victory."
The following extract from a dead Turkish officer's notebook, reproduced in the
Russkaia Viedomosti (No. 205), throws some light on the Turkish estimate of the
value of Armenian support in the war. "If our Armenians had been with us,"
wrote this Turkish officer, "we would have defeated the Russians long
ago."[16]
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young Armenian males of the "zone of desertion" had served in the Army, they
would have provided more than 50,000 troops. If they had served, there might never
have been a Sarikamis defeat.
The Armenians from Hopa to Erzurum to Hinis to Van were not the only Armenians who did
not serve. The 10s of thousands of Armenians of Sivas who formed chette bands did not
serve. The rebels in Zeytun and elsewhere in Cilicia did not serve. The Armenians who
fled to the Greek islands or to Egypt or Cyprus did not serve. More precisely, many of
these Armenian young men did serve, but they served in the armies of the Ottomans'
enemies. They did not protect their homeland, they attacked it.
Justin McCarthy, March 24, 2005, in a speech before the
Turkish Grand National Assembly.
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The services of the Russian Armenians to the Allied cause, but
principally, of course to the Russian cause during the war, have been of a more direct and
positive character and of far-reaching importance. They may be divided into two distinct
parts, namely, military and political; and in order the better to explain the full meaning
of the Armenian "strong support of the Russian cause" (in the words of The
Times) , I will deal with each of the two parts separately.
The Armenian population of Russian Armenia and the Caucasus numbers, roughly, 1,750,000
souls, and there are probably another 100,000 to 200,000 Armenians scattered over the
other parts of the empire. They are liable to military service as Russian subjects, and it
is estimated that they have given to the Russian army some 160,000 men. Apart from this
not negligible number of men called to the colours in the ordinary course of mobilization,
the Armenians, as a result of an understanding with the authorities, organized and
equipped at their own expense a separate auxiliary volunteer force under tried and
experienced guerilla leaders, such as Andranik, Kéri and others, to co-operate with the
Caucasian army. This force contained a number of Turkish Armenians, mostly refugees from
previous massacres. Some twenty thousand men responded to the call for volunteers, though
I believe not more than about ten thousand could be armed and sent to the front. The
greatest enthusiasm prevailed. Armenian students at the Universities of Moscow and
Petrograd and educational institutions in the Caucasus vied with each other in their
eagerness to take part in the fight for the liberation of their kinsmen from bondage.
Several young lady students offered to enlist, but I believe all but two or three were
dissuaded from taking part in actual fighting. Boys of fourteen and fifteen years ran away
from home and tramped long distances to join the volunteer battalions. It is recorded that
an Armenian widow at Kars, on hearing that her only son had been killed in battle,
exclaimed, "Curse me that I did not give birth to ten more sons to fight and die for
the freedom of our country."
The volunteer force was not large, but it was a mobile force well adapted to the
semi-guerilla kind of warfare carried on in Armenia, and the men knew the country. They
seem to have done good work as scouts in particular, though they took part in many severe
engagements and were mentioned once or twice in Russian communiqués as "our Armenian
detachments." Generous appreciation of the services and gallantry of the volunteers
as well as of Armenians in the army has been expressed by Russian military commanders, the
Press, and public men. High military honours were conferred upon the volunteer leaders,
and His Imperial Majesty the Czar honoured the Armenian nation by his visit to the
Armenian Cathedral in Tiflis, demonstrating his satisfaction with the part played by
Armenians in the war.[17]
There are, of course, many Armenian high officers in the Russian Army, including several
generals, but so far they have not had the opportunity of producing in this war
outstanding military leaders of the calibre of Loris Melikoff and Terkhougasoff. General
Samsonoff, "the Russian Kitchener," was killed early in the war in East Prussia
in his gallant and successful attempt to relieve the pressure on Paris.
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The political effect of
the strong and enthusiastic support of the Russian cause by Armenians has been to
keep in check the discontented and fanatical section of the Tartars and other
Moslems of the Caucasus, who would have been disposed to make common cause with the
Turks whenever a favourable opportunity should present itself to do so without much
risk to themselves. The Tartars and other Moslem elements of the Caucasus are as a
whole genuinely loyal to Russia, but the existence of a minority who would welcome
the success of the Turkish invasion cannot be denied. Some of the Ajars did, in
fact, join the Turks during their invasion of Ardahan.
All things considered, therefore, those who have any knowledge of the racial and
political conditions in the Caucasus will not, I think, regard it as in any sense an
exaggeration to assert that the whole-hearted support of the Armenians — and I may
also add, though in a lesser degree, the Georgians — has contributed very
materially to the success of Russian arms in the Caucasian theatre of the war. The
absence of that support, or even mere formal or lukewarm support, would not only
most probably have had serious consequences for the Caucasus, it would have left the
whole of Persia at the mercy of the Turks; and who can say what the consequences of
such a catastrophe would have been on Arabia, Mesopotamia, Afghanistan and even the
northern frontiers of India itself?
Nearly all the able-bodied Armenians in France, between 1000 and 1500 strong, joined
the French Foreign Legion quite early in the war. Some Armenians came from the
United States to fight for France. Only some 250 have survived, I understand, most
of whom are proud possessors of the Military Cross.
Propaganda in neutral countries has played an important part during the war. The
just cause of the Allies has had no stauncher supporters or better propagandists
than the hundred and twenty-five thousand or more Armenians in the United States,
while the Great Tragedy of Armenia has incidentally added to the armoury of the
Allies a melancholy but formidable moral weapon.
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Chapter VI
14.. Pierre Loti, the well-known French
writer, who was an ardent Turkophile before the war, after adding his quota to the
current, and, one is constrained to say, cheap, comments on the lack of courage and
numberless other failings of the Armenians, adds the following P.S. in his Turquie
Agonisante (pp. 94-95) after a longer sojourn in the country and closer contact with
realities. (I give the translation from the French.)
"Before concluding I desire to make honourable, sincere and spontaneous amends
to the Armenians, at least as regards their attitude in the ranks of the Ottoman
Army. This is certainly not due to the protestations which they have inserted in the
Constantinople Press by the power of gold." [This is a curious admission by
Pierre Loti; one of the stock cries of the Turkophiles is that the Turk is above
"bakshish."] "No, I have many friends among Turkish officers; I have
learned from them, and there can be no doubt, that my earlier information was
exaggerated, and that, notwithstanding a good number of previous desertions, the
Armenians placed under their orders conducted themselves with courage. Therefore, I
am happy to be able to withdraw without arrière pensée what I have said on this
subject, and I apologize."
Of all British games and sports Armenians in different parts of the British Empire,
the Dutch Colonies and Persia have manifested a natural predilection for Rugby
Football, in which physical courage comes into play more than in most other games.
In recent Years the Armenian College of Calcutta won the Calcutta Schools' Cup three
years in succession, which gave it the right to retain the trophy. I am glad to see
in the March issue of Ararat that the Boy Scouts of the same college, under
Scoutmaster Dr. G. D. Hope, have won the King's Flag, presented by His Majesty to
the troop having the largest number of King's Scouts in India and Burmah.
15.. I may here point out that — though
it is stated in the admirable historical summary in the Blue-book (p. 649) that
"the number of those who have emerged from hiding since the Russian occupation
is extraordinarily small" — this number has been growing very considerably of
late, as may be seen from Mr. Backhouse's telegram to the chairman of the Armenian
Refugees (Lord Mayor's) Fund, dated Tiflis, November 27, 1916, published in the
newspapers.
16.. Compare an Armenian officer's
evidence, Blue-book, p. 231, ". . . they laid the blame for this defeat upon
the Armenians, though he could not tell why."
17.. In an article on "The Armenian
Massacres" in the April Contemporary Review, Mr. Lewis Einstein, ex-member of
the staff of the United States Embassy in Constantinople, says: "Talaat
attributed the disasters that befell the Turks at Sarikamish, in Azerbaijan and at
Van, to the Armenian volunteers."
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Thoughts |
"The struggle that has gone on
for five or six centuries between Armenian and Turk symbolizes, perhaps better than any
event in history, the invincibility of the spirit of Christianity ..."
With that statement, the author was already off in
la-la land. The divide between "Armenian and Turk" mainly began after the end of
the 18th century, as the Ottoman Empire increasingly weakened, and Armenians sought their
share of the pie. Otherwise, there was a brotherly feeling between the two peoples —
remember, the Armenians were known as the "loyal nation" — and the Armenians
prospered as never before in their history. What Hacopian is deceitfully going for is the
age-old Christian sympathy vote (It's civilized "us" against the heathen Mongol
hordes!) that Armenians then and now have taken such shameless advantage of.
His questions, "What
claim had the Turks upon the sympathy and support of their Armenian subjects? Is sympathy
won by tyranny, or loyalty bred by massacre?" are most hollow, especially
since the Armenians were loyal enough to have earned their special moniker. They were
treated worse by their Byzantine rulers, and worse even by their big brother, the Russians.
But let's concentrate on Armenian activities in the
war which was, as much as Hacopian attempted to distort the picture, nothing less than
betrayal.
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From the chapter We Learn...
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1) All the Armenian leaders promised was a
correct attitude as Ottoman subjects, Hacopian explains, in trying to justify
why Turkish overtures made to ensure Armenian loyalty were insufficient. Armenian
historian K. S. Papazian fills us in on the Armenians' two-fold
betrayal: "In August 1914 the young Turks asked the Dashnag Convention,
then in session in Erzurum, to carry out their old agreement
of 1907 and start an uprising among the Armenians of the Caucasus against the
Russian government. The Dashnagtzoutune refused to do this and gave assurance that
in the event of war between Russia and Turkey, they would support Turkey as loyal
citizens. On the other hand, they could not be held responsible for the Russian
Armenians.. The fact remains, however, that the leaders of the Turkish-Armenian
section of the Dashnagtzoutune did not carry out their promise
of loyalty to the Turkish cause when the Turks entered the war."
2) The Young Turks had joined the war
against (the Armenians') wish and advice. Number One: war was declared against
the Ottoman Empire, not the other way around. Number Two: it's a peculiar condition
of any government on earth not to solicit permission from their minorities, before
going to war. Few wars in history have had the complete backing of the people.
Unfortunately, especially when the nation's existence is threatened, when there is a
war, the people have a duty to comply. Once again, Armenians expect to be a
"special exception" to the rules.
3) Armenians deserted in large
numbers. The author correctly states there were Turkish deserters as well, but
these mainly deserted as conditions deteriorated in later times. Many of the
Armenians who deserted treacherously joined the ranks of the enemy, by the close of
1914, as Hacopian specified. That's why they were disarmed and made to serve in the
engineering corps (that's "labor battalions" and "pack animals,"
in genocide-speak.)
Hacopian tells us some were urged to return to
the ranks by Armenian leaders. I wish we had more than his "word,"
although it's possible such took place at times. Not all Armenians were disloyal,
and were caught between their desire for their lives to continue normally, and the
demands made by their greedy and dangerous revolutionary leaders. As for the mostly
truthful charge that Armenian soldiers were harried, ill-treated and insulted by
their Turkish officers and comrades at every turn, what he doesn't mention is
that their Turkish "comrades" were ill-treated by the officer corps no
less. We've all seen war movies where higher ranked ones in charge can behave pretty
insensitively, and the officers of the Turkish military were evidently no exception.
As for ill treatment by comrades, the Armenians could not have been treated worse
(at least "in the closing months of 1914") than blacks in WWII's American
Army, who were so looked down upon, they were segregated. That did not give
permission for black American soldiers to desert to the Nazi side.
Here's
a soldier who was harried, ill-treated, and insulted at every turn!
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Jerry
Lewis: Army Sad Sack |
Why, it's Jerry Lewis, in
"AT WAR WITH THE ARMY." Click on Jerry's picture to hear what
he had to say, while playing a WWII soldier in the U.S. Army... getting picked
on by his officers and comrades at every turn.
While this is a movie, make no mistake:
being "At War with the Army" is the lot of every poor grunt trapped
in any nation's military machine, especially in "olden" days. It's a
peculiarly Armenian trait to claim because misery is encountered, the reason
must have to do with being Armenian! This must go with Prime Minister
Hovhannes Katchaznouni's analysis of the Armenian character... Armenians can't accept
responsibility. If something goes wrong, it has got to be the other guy's
fault.
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Military Treatment Preferred by
Armenians?
At Arabkir they were
hospitably housed by an Armenian silk merchant, who had a Russian servant,
made prisoner during the Crimean War. His conversation in his native language
with Captain Burnaby showed pretty plainly why he had not returned to the
ranks of the Russians. "I was beaten all day and night. My Colonel kicked
me. We were all beaten then." When Captain Burnaby pointed out to him
that, perhaps, if the Russians conquered the country he might be hanged, he
declared he would sooner suffer that fate than go back. Turkey was much
better than Russia, which was "a dreadful country for the poor."
"I hope my brothers will not come here. Allah has given our father, the
Czar, much land; why does he want more?"
"On Horseback through
Asia Minor," Captain Fred Burnaby, 1877
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4) Djevdet Bey told his friends: "It is
the Armenians much more than the Russians who are fighting us." That's
important; remember, Armenian propaganda tells us that villain of villains, Cevdet
Bey, the governor of Van who loved to hammer horseshoes upon Armenian feet, set
about to massacre the poor innocent Armenians. And the Van Armenians fought back
only as "self defense," a myth Hacopian is only too happy to perpetuate.
5) Arnold Toynbee's "Treatment of
Armenians" Blue Book work proves there was no revolt. Ri-i-ghhtt. And the Armenians
were far from "ill-armed," having
stockpiled sophisticated weaponry throughout the empire, including, at times,
artillery. It's particularly amusing for the author to have written, "The massacres and deportations began soon after the collapse
of the Turkish invasion of the Caucasus." In other words, the Turkish
Army disintegrated in the east, the Russians were crashing through the gates, and it
was this particularly dangerous time that the Turks chose to go on a
resource-depleting "genocide" course. It was only at that point the
Armenians decided to "defend" themselves because, as Hacopian shamefully
continues, "There was no armed resistance before
that."
6) A Constantinople telegram... stated that
there were 30,000 armed Armenian rebels in the vilayet of Sivas. This is an obvious
exaggeration. Is it? Since the report came from Armenian prisoners (they broke
the figure down to 15,000 joining the Russians, and 15,000 staying to fight from
behind the lines) maybe Hacopian suffered here with a "Freudian slip" that
Armenians are known to exaggerate. Since the Armenian population in Sivas was nearly
200,000 before the war, these numbers are very believable.
7) ...The Armenian resistance to massacre
and deportation proved to be more serious than (the Turks) had anticipated, and...
they had to detach large numbers of troops... to keep these "rebels" in
check. Naturally, Hacopian got the order "mixed up" in his duties as
an Armenian propagandist. Attacks from Ottoman-Armenian "rebels" came
first, as soon as war broke out, resulting in the relocation decision of May, 1915. The rebellion
was no laughing matter; as military history Ed Erickson remarked, "It is
beyond question that the actuality of the Armenian revolts in the key cities astride
the major eastern roads and railroads posed a significant military problem in the
real sense. In point of fact, there were heavily armed and organized bands of
Armenians operating in concert with their Russian allies." Furthermore,
attacks from Armenian rebels upon the poorly guarded convoys did not take place, a curious factor if Armenians thought their
women and children were marked for murder.
8) On the Turkish estimate of the value of
Armenian support in the war. "If our Armenians had been with us," wrote
this Turkish officer, "we would have defeated the Russians long ago."
I don't know if Armenian support would have made the difference against the powerful
Russians, but this statement is certainly revealing about the cost of Armenian
treachery.
9) (Armenians) have given to the Russian
army some 160,000 men. This estimate deviates from Boghos Nubar's 150,000, and Nubar's figure of 50,000 also contrasts
with Hacopian's downplayed 20,000 volunteers (containing "a number of
Turkish Armenians, mostly refugees from previous massacres"; hoo-boy!
Actually, a New York Times article revealed only 75,000 of the Armenians
in the Russian Army were "Russian Armenians," the rest mostly coming from
the Ottoman Empire. Ones arriving from other lands such as France and America were
primarily "Turkish Armenians," as the Times article referred to
them, not that long ago.)
Hacopian's claim that there were nearly 2
million Armenians in Russia is highly exaggerated. 1.1 million, according to
encyclopedias of the period, is closer to the mark.
10) Several young lady students offered to
enlist... Boys of fourteen and fifteen years ran away from home and tramped long
distances to join the volunteer battalions. Especially Ottoman-Armenians. Yes,
many young Armenians by this time were whipped to a fever pitch by Dashnaks and
others, cultivating this intense hatred against the Turks. The 17-year-old
Ottoman-Armenian Dashnak, Soghoman Tehlirian,
along with his brother, were among those who joined the Russians at the end of 1914;
here are a few other
"famous" examples.
11) "Curse me that I did not give birth
to ten more sons to fight and die for the freedom of our country."As a
point of interest, another Armenian historian, Vazkene Aykouni, also related the story about the Armenian widow in
Kars, but she was quoted differently, as she "struck" her aged womb: "May
it be cursed for being no longer capable of bearing children for our glorious
army!"
12) The just cause of the Allies has had no
stauncher supporters or better propagandists than the hundred and twenty-five
thousand or more Armenians in the United States. Truer words have rarely been
spoken! And even Hacopian may not have been able to imagine how effectively those
Armenian-Americans, now numbering around a million, have continued in their role as
"better propagandists," well into the 21st century.
13) The volunteer force was not large, but
it was a mobile force well adapted to the semi-guerilla kind of warfare carried on
in Armenia, and the men knew the country. By "Armenia," the author is
talking about the eastern region of the Ottoman Empire, since the Republic of
Armenia was established after the writing of this book. As gently as he is treading,
the Armenian author is corroborating the fact that Ottoman Armenians (and they had
to be Ottoman Armenians, since "the men knew the country") engaged
in guerilla warfare. (Despite Hacopian's attempts at sugarcoating, there was nothing
"semi" about it. And as far as his hopes in downplaying the size of the
volunteer force, Prof. McCarthy reached a different conclusion:"...the main Armenian attack came
from well-armed and trained rebel bands. They may have numbered as many as
100,000 men. In Sivas Vilâyeti alone Ottoman officials estimated 30,000
Armenian partisans.") This significant figure is not much less than the
number of American soldiers who invaded and occupied Iraq.
14) Regarding the statement by Talat Pasha on
the Armenian role in Sarikamish (Footnote 17), here is a bit more on the subject.
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