this year the turkish nation is mourning and praying again for referring to notes from the personal diary of russian general l odishe liyetze on the turkish front he wrote on the nights march alone armenian butchers bayoneted and axed to death muslims in areas surrounding erzincan these barbars threw their victims into pits most likely dug according to their sinister plans to extinguish muslims in groups of my adjutant counted and unearthed such pits this is an act against our world of civilization on march lieut colonel griyaznof wrote from an official russian account of the turkish genocide roads leading to villages were littered with bayoneted torsos dismembered joints and carved out organs of muslim peasants alas mainly of women and children source doc dr azmi suslu russian view on the atrocities committed by the armenians against the turks ankara universitesi ankara pp document no archive no cabin no drawer no file no section no contents no acting commander of erzurum and deveboynu regions and commander of the second erzurum artillery regiment prisoner of war lieutenant colonel toverdodleyov the things i have heard and seen during the two months until the liberation of erzurum by the turks have surpassed all the allegations concerning the vicious degenerate characteristic of the armenians during the russian occupation of erzurum no armenian was permitted to approach the city and its environs while the commander of the first army corps general kaltiyin remained in power troops including armenian enlisted men were not sent to the area when the security measures were lifted the armenians began to attack erzurum and its surroundings following the attacks came the plundering of the houses in the city and the villages and the murder of the owners of these houses plundering was widely committed by the soldiers this plunder was mainly committed by armenian soldiers who had remained in the rear during the war one day while passing through the streets on horseback a group of soldiers including an armenian soldier began to drag two old men of seventy years in a certain direction the roads were covered with mud and these people were dragging the two helpless turks through the mud and dirt it was understood later that all these were nothing but tricks and traps the turks who joined the gendarmarie soon changed their minds and withdrew the reason was that most of the turks who were on night patrol did not return and no one knew what had happened to them the turks who had been sent outside the city for labour began to disappear also finally the court martial which had been established for the trials of murderers and plunderers began to liquidate itself for fear that they themselves would be punished the incidents of murder and rape which had decreased began to occur more frequently sometime in january and february a leading turkish citizen haci bekir efendi from erzurum was killed one night at his home the commander in chief odiselidge gave orders to find murderers within three days the commander in chief has bitterly reminded the armenian intellectuals that disobedience among the armenian enlisted men had reached its highest point that they had insulted and robbed the people and half of the turks sent outside the city had not returned we learnt the details this incident from the commander in chief odishelidge they were as follows the killings were organized by the doctors and the employers and the act of killing was committed solely by the armenian renegades more than eight hundred unarmed and defenceless turks have been killed in erzincan large holes were dug and the defenceless turks were slaughtered like animals next to the holes later the murdered turks were thrown into the holes the armenian who stood near the hole would say when the hole was filled with the corpses seventy dead bodies well this hole can take ten more thus ten more turks would be cut into pieces thrown into the hole and when the hole was full it would be covered over with soil the armenians responsible for the act of murdering would frequently fill a house with eighty turks and cut their heads off one by one following the erzincan massacre the armenians began to withdraw towards erzurum the armenian renegades among those who withdrew to erzurum from erzincan raided the moslem villages on the road and destroyed the entire population together with the villages during the transportation of the cannons ammunition and the carriages that were outside the war area certain people were hired among the kurdish population to conduct the horse carriages while the travellers were passing through erzurum the armenians took advantage of the time when the russian soldiers were in their dwellings and began to kill the kurds they had hired when the russian soldiers heard the cries of the dying kurds they attempted to help them however the armenians threatened the russian soldiers by vowing that they would have the same fate if they intervened and thus prevented them from acting all these terrifying acts of slaughter were committed with hatred and loathing lieutenant medivani from the russian army described an incident that he witnessed in erzurum as follows an armenian had shot a kurd the kurd fell down but did not die the armenian attempted to force the stick in his hand into the mouth of the dying kurd however since the kurd had firmly closed his jaws in his agony the armenian failed in his attempt having seen this the armenian ripped open the abdomen of the kurd disembowelled him and finally killed him by stamping him with the iron heel of his boot odishelidge himself told us that all the turks who could not escape from the village of ilica were killed their heads had been cut off by axes he also told us that he had seen thousands of murdered children lieutenant colonel gryaznov who passed through the village of ilica three weeks after the massacre told us the following there were thousands of dead bodies hacked to pieces on the roads every armenian who happened to pass through these roads cursed and spat on the corpses in the courtyard of a mosque which was about x meter square dead bodies were piled to a height of centimeters among these corpses were men and women of every age children and old people the women s bodies had obvious marks of rape the genitals of many girls were filled with gun powder a few educated armenian girls who worked as telephone operators for the armenian troops were called by lieutenant colonel gryaznov to the courtyard of the mosque and he bitterly told them to be proud of what the armenians had done to the lieutenant colonel s disgusted amazement the armenian girls started to laugh and giggle instead of being horrified the lieutenant colonel had severely reprimanded those girls for their indecent behaviour when he told the girls that the armenians including women were generally more licentious than even the wildest animals and that their indecent and shameful laughter was the most obvious evidence of their inhumanity and barbarity before a scene that appalled even veteran soldiers the armenian girls finally remembered their sense of shame and claimed they had laughed because they were nervous an armenian contractor at the alaca communication zone command narrated the following incident which took place on february the armenians had nailed a turkish women to the wall they had cut out the women s heart and placed the heart on top of her head the great massacre in erzurum began on february the enlisted men of the artillery division caught and stripped people then they took these people into the bath to satisfy their lusts people among this group were able to save their lives as the result of my decisive attempts the others the armenians claimed were released when they learnt that i understood what was going on among those who organized this treacherous act was the envoy to the armenian officers karagodaviev today some turks were murdered on the streets on february some armenians have shot more than ten innocent moslems the russian soldiers who attempted to save these people were threatened with death meanwhile i imprisoned an armenian for murdering an innocent turk when an armenian officer told an armenian murderer that he would be hanged for his crime the killer shouted furiously how dare you hang an armenian for killing a turk in erzurum the armenians burned down the turkish market on february i heard that the entire population of tepekoy village situated within the artillery area had been totally annihilated on the same day when antranik entered erzurum i reported the massacre to him and asked him to track down the perpetrators of this horrible act however no result was achieved in the villages whose inhabitants had been massacred there was a natural silence on the night of february the armenians deceived the russians perpetrated a massacre and escaped for fear of the turkish soldiers later it was understood that this massacre had been based upon a method organized and planned in a circular the population had been herded in a certain place and then killed one by one the number of murders committed on that night reached three thousand it was the armenians who bragged to about the details of the massacre the armenians fighting against the turkish soldiers were so few in number and so cowardly that they could not even withstand the turkish soldiers who consisted of only five hundred people and two cannons for one night and ran away the leading armenians of the community could have prevented this massacre however the armenian intellectuals had shared the same ideas with the renegades in this massacre just as in all the others the lower classes within the armenian community have always obeyed the orders of the leading armenian figures and commanders i do not like to give the impression that all armenian intellectuals were accessories to these murders no for there were people who opposed the armenians for such actions since they understood that it would yield no result however such people were only a minority furthermore such people were considered as traitors to the armenian cause some have seemingly opposed the armenian murders but have supported the massacres secretly some on the other hand preferred to remain silent there were certain others who when accused by the russians of infamy would say the following you are russians you can never understand the armenian cause the armenians had a conscience they would commit massacres and then would flee in fear of the turkish soldiers serdar argic we closed the roads and mountain passes that might serve as ways of escape for the turks and then proceeded in the work of extermination ohanus appressian in soviet armenia today there no longer exists a single turkish soul sahak melkonian
