Corroborated by Ottoman documents

 Ottoman reports on this mass movement can be found in Asair ve Muhacirin (Istanbul Dahiliye) to the Governor of Kastamou, 3 Safar 1338/28 October 1919: BBA DH/SFR dosya 104, doc. 96; Kalemi Mahsus (Istanbul Dahiliye) to governors of Ankara, Konya, Bolu and TEke, 8 Safar 1338/2 November 1919: BBA DH/SFR dosya 104. docs. 146 and 147: Kalem-i Mahsus to District Governor of Mamuretulaziz, 15 Safar 1338/9 November 1919: BBA DH/SFR dosya 104. doc. 182.

 At the same time, Greek nationalists transported Greek peasants from central Anatolia either to the Izmir occupation area or to the Black Sea coast, where they sent out hundreds of terrorist bands who devastated town and country like in order to kill or drive out the settled Turkish population to establish a homogeneous Greek Pontus state.

Members of the French-Armenian Legion

 Boghos Nubar Pasha sent some of the Armenian settlers from among the refugees gathered in Iraq, Syria, and Egypt and from Armenians living in Europe and America. Most, however, sent by Armenian nationalist organizations from Kayseri, Erzincan, Erzurum, Samsun, Izmit and Adapazari, which they left because of their justified fears that their lives were in danger as a result of their cooperation with the Allied occupation armies. The French also sent several thousand refugees who had settled in Syria and Beirut during the war in order to remove what had become a disruptive element in the population. About 120,000 Armenian settleres were thus brought to Cilicia during these years, in addition to the 50,000 who came from Istanbul and elsewhere in Anatolia to Antep, Marash and Zeytun, all for the purpose of establishing an Armenian state in Cilicia under the permanent protection of France. (Paul du Veou, "La Passion de la Cilicie: 1919-1922. Paris, Librarie orientaliste P. Geuthner, 1954; Zekiner, Tricolor, pp. 169-176, 208.)

The French expected these Armenians to peacably settle beside their Muslim neighbors, but instead the refugees (many members of Antranik's guerilla bands already predisposed to committing havoc) joined the Armenian Legion in attacking the Muslims throughout Cilicia (many sources are provided, including Richard Hovannisian's "The Republic of Armenia," 1974, pp. 325, 416, and Antranig Chalabian's "General Andranik and the Armenian Revolutionary Movement," 1988), sometimes joined in their attacks around Urfa and Rakka by local Arab tribes, always happy to ravage towns when the opportunity presented itself.

 Lt. General Sir W. N. Congreve to Chief of Imperial General Staff, General Sir Henry Wilson, Cairo, 19 October 1919 (Wilson papers 2/89/64. Keith Jeffrey, "The Military Correspondence of Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson, 1918-1922," Army Records Society, The Bodley Head, 1985, pp. 129-130)

"I am just back from Cilicia and Syria and have had an interesting time. You are I am sure filled up with the opinions of politicals, and want to hear no more. I am inclined to think them alarmists and to exaggerate things for the increase of their own importance, and I am not at all sure that they all always do all they can to promote the entente. I saw Picot and Brémond and both expressed themselves satisfied with us now, bar the matter of Armenians who we have been flooding Cilicia. Poor devils, no one seems to want them anywhere, and yet despite all they have gone through, I did not see a thin one amongst a good many thousand I saw, and most looked cheery too. The massacres seem to have been a good deal exaggerated but the destruction of their villages is very complete for hardly a stone remained on another. The women and children seem anyway to have survived, and the former are reported content to live with Turks and have children by them. I don't know what there is about the Armenians, but no one, not even the missionaries, seems to have a good word to say about them...."

  Mark Bristol Reports

 American High Commissioner Mark Bristol reported that his sources told him that all the anarchy and killings going on in Cilicia were due to the French treatment of the Turks as uncivilized colonials and the French mistake in arming and supporting the Armenians: "A new condition has arisen in Turkey by reason of the French occupation of Syria and Cilicia. This condition is similar to the one that was caused by the Greek occupation of Smyrna. The use by the French of Armenian soldiers and the arming of Armenians brought about an uprising of the local population and assistance being sent by the Turks from the Nationalist forces. In ports of Syria where the French were popular they created antagonism by their tactless method of occupying the country as conquerors and replacing the native flags with French flags, also by assuming all governmental functions. "Likewise hostile Christian opposition on the part of the Turks, Kurds and Arabs was shown to the French forces. It is reported that the French destroyed villages, outraged women, and killed the natives, and the result has been that a state of war now existing in Cilicia and the French are compelled to retire from Ourfa and Marash. It is reported that the Turks have retaliated by killing the native Armenians and destroying villages, however it is understood that the Armenians left behind by French at Marash are held as prisoners and are not otherwise being molested. "It is known that American citizens in Aintab, Ourfa and Marash are safe and are not being molested and American property is being respected.

  The Armenians Blow Town

 The real losers were in fact the Armenians in Cilicia, since by their welcome of the French occupation, their support of the Armenian Legion, and their participation in the rigorous French administration, they had ended whatever feelings of community that previously had existed with their Turkish neighbors and laid themselves open to violent acts of retribution. As soon as they heard the news of the Treaty of Ankara and the consequent French evacuation, therefore, most Armenians in Cilicia were terrified, and rightfully so. However much both the French and the Turkish nationalists promised to protect them, the Armenians knew that under the conditions that existed in that area at that time they had little chance to escape the vengeance of those Turks who had lost families, homes, and properties as a result of the French occupation and the activities of the Armenian Legion. Almost all the Armenians in Cilicia therefore did the only thing they could do under the circumstances. They began to pack up and leave their homes, some going with the evacuating French forces, some sailing on British and French ships that came to the ports of the area to pick them up, some walking overland into Syria, Palestine and Lebanon, where they settled down and made new lives for themselves. In this, they were encouraged to depart by Armenian nationalist agents who hoped that by doing so they would shame the French, or if not them the Americans and British, to send in new troops which would enable them to establish an entirely Armenian state throughout Cilicia. Thus, when Avetis Aharonian and Gabriel Noradoungian went to French Premier Aristide Briand to complain about the French withdrawal, Briand was the one who complained:

"I ordered an examination and I regret to tell you that, according to my information, the exodus of Armenian population from Cilicia is the result largely of the zealous propaganda which unknown individuals and Gomidehs [Komitacis] have made on the spot. For what earthly reason I do not know. But this propaganda is doubly embarrassing for France. On the one hand, the Armenians are fleeing from Cilicia, a fact that discredits France for having failed to give refugee Armenians the needed protection, and on the other hand the refugees have found no other protector outside of France, and once again we have been forced to care for their needs. Now I ask you, how long shall this abnormal situation continue to last....The Turks have not harmed them; they have kept their promise. What was the need of this wholesale exodus?"

(December 1921. Avetis Aharonian, "From Sardarapat to Sèvres and Lausanne", The Armenian Review, XVIII/1-69 (Spring, 1965), p. 60.)

The Armenian Catholicos of Cilicia sent a telegram to the Patriarchate as well as the High Commissioners in Istanbul informing them that all his people wanted to emigrate from Cilicia en masse and asking that the necessary boats be sent to Mersin to carry them into exile. In November Armenian banks and business houses throughout Cilicia were liquidated. The College of Jesuits and the School of the Sisters of Saint Joseph sent their students together to Iskenderun. Between November 13 and 22, some 12,000 Armenians embarked at Mersin alone. For the moment the major problem was at Iskenderun, where thousands of Armenians arrived from Mersin with absolutely nothing except what they wore and could carry. They had to be fed and clothed by a French administration that hardly could take care of itself. The confusion and suffering were immense. Almost all the Armenians were bitterly unhappy with France in particular, claiming that it had promised to establish an Armenian state for them in Cilicia and had reneged on a solemn obligation to Christians.

 By the end of 1923, the total number of Armenians who had left Cilicia are said to have numbered some 175,000, almost all those who had lived there before the war together with those who had emigrated from central Anatolia during 1919 and 1920. [Anahide Ter Minassian, La République d'Arménie, Paris, Éditions Complexe, 1989, pp. 255-256.] On his return to Paris in late January 1922, General Gouraud reported to a special session held at the Sorbonne that "...overall the evacuation of Cilicia took place in perfect order, without violence, and without a single person being killed or even wounded." [Sorbonne Conference held in Paris on 26 January 1922. Quoted in Gourad, op. cit., p. 112.] Turkish forces and government officials entered the evacuated cities and towns amidst joyful popular demonstrations celebrating their liberation from the oppressive French occupation, not only in Cilicia, but throughout the entire country. One of their first acts was to declare invalid all property transfers which had been forced on local Turks and Jews by the French occupation authorities who had turned hundreds of houses and arms thus surrendered over to Armenians and Frenchmen at prices far below their market values. Thus were the immediate effects of the French and Armenian occupation of south-eastern Anatolia alleviated, though for Turkish and Jewish families who had lost everything, this was small consolation indeed. It would take years of insistence by Mustafa Kemâl Atatürk that the people of the new Turkish Republic that emerged from the war should avoid continued hatreds resulting from past atrocities inflicted on them and their ancestors and seek friendship with all the people of the world, including those who had attacked them so viciously during and after World War I, that the Turks attempted to live in friendship with the other peoples of the area, though in many cases the Christian nationalists in particular, nurtured as they were by hatred and religious bigotry, left the Turks puzzled, unable to understand why their overtures of friendship had been briskly rejected while at the same time France as well as Greece have made no effort to pay to Turkey the billions of dollars they owe it for the terrible material and moral damage that their occupation troops inflicted on the country, uncalled-for damage, far beyond any sort of authorization they had been given by the Mondros Armistice Agreement or the Paris Peace Conference.