Bitlis

In The Bicycle Rider in Beverly Hills, he tells us that explicitly.

My mother's mother, Lucy, was forever encouraging me to move through life with what she called Gairot, which is a phonetic rendering of an Armenian word, or a word of Bitlis, or a word of the Saroyan family, or a word invented by my grandmother herself, which signified, apparently, these things.

to assault the world with early morning swiftness and clarity of mind, with planning, with zest, with brilliance, with cunning, with eagerness and with skill.

A man with no gyrote, Lucy frequently said, is dead.

They were destroyed, graves were damaged, and gravestones were broken by the state force- forces.

And one of the most striking ex- examples is the Garza Cemetery in Bitlis.

The cemetery was destroyed using heavy machinery, and the bodies, the remains of 282 people were removed and taken to the Forensic Medicine Institute in Istanbul, and without informing the families.

From there, they were taken to the Kilyos Cemetery of the unclaimed in Istanbul.

The mission included representatives of all the Eastern races, such as the Kurds, Persians, Georgians, Chechens, Lesbians, Circassians, and the Caucasian Tartars, but not the Armenians.

during those same days the annual congress of the armenian national organization was in session at erzeroum in the name of the turkish government the above-mentioned mission appealed to the armenian organization with the following proposition If the Armenians, the Turkish as well as the Russian Armenians, would give active cooperation to the Turkish armies, the Turkish government under a German guarantee would promise to create after the war an autonomous Armenia, made up of Russian Armenia and the three Turkish roulettes of Erezum, Van and Bitlis, under the suzerainty of the Ottoman Empire.

the turkish delegates in order to persuade the armenians to accept this proposal informed them also that they the turks had already won the cooperation of the georgians and the tartars as well as the mountaineers of the northern caucasus and therefore the non-compliance of the armenians under such circumstances would be very stupid and fraught with danger for them on both sides of the boundary between turkey and russia

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Had it not been for these two points of stubborn resistance against the Turkish troops in the summer of 1915, the two Turkish offensives already spoken of would have had great chances of success.

This is an undisputed fact with all the inhabitants of the Near East, and indeed three months after these events, when the Armenian volunteers, together with the Russian troops, recommenced their drive and captured the cities of Mosh and Bitlis, in the diary of a Turkish officer, who was taken prisoner in Bitlis, was found the following item, which appeared at the time in the Russian press.

were asked why we massacre the armenians the reason is quite plain to me had not the armenians fought against us we should have reached tiflis and baku long ago addition to van and sassoon during the same july when deportations and organized massacres were going on three other places might be mentioned where hopeless attempts at resistance were made by the armenians against the savage turks and kurds these places were sivas urfa and shabim at sivas the heroic resistance of murat and his comrades in their escape were so full of thrilling events that they had been likened to the adventures of odysseus murat is a brave warrior who together with his companion sepo had fought at sasun in nineteen o four and had taken part in the armenian and tartar clashes of nineteen o five and nineteen o six in the caucasus When deportations and massacres commenced in 1915, Turkish gendarmes were sent to capture Murat, who was living with his wife and child in a village near Sivas.

A. October 31st, 1894.

We have word from Bitlis that the destruction of life in Susun, south of Mush, was even greater than was supposed.

The brief note which has reached us says, 27 villages annihilated in Susun, 6,000 men, women, and children massacred by troops and Kurds.

this awful story is just beginning to be known here though the massacre took place early in september the turks have used infinite pains to prevent news leaking out even going to the length of sending back from trebizond many hundreds from the moosh region who had come this way on business This massacre was ordered from Constantinople in the sense that some Kurds, having robbed Armenian villages of flocks, the Armenians pursued and tried to recover their property, and a fight ensued in which a dozen Kurds were killed.

the authorities have taken and are taking every precaution to prevent accounts of the famous massacre of mouche from reaching the outside world the english consul mr hallward went on a tour in the region affected he was subjected to constant annoying espionage and was absolutely unable to penetrate into the devastated region To what extent Armenian agitation has provoked the terrible massacre, it is difficult to determine.

For a year or more, there seems to have been an Armenian from Constantinople staying in the region as an agitator.

For a long time, he skillfully evaded his pursuers, but was at last caught and taken to Bitlis.

He demanded to be taken to Constantinople and to the Sultan, and it is said he is now living at the capital, receiving a large salary from the government.

In that same sorrowful summer of 1916, the Armenians heard the news that England, France, and Russia had signed an agreement concerning Armenia.

According to that agreement, Russia was to take over the three vilayets of Turkish Armenia, Erzurum, Bitlis, and Van, while southern Armenia and Cilicia were to be put under the guardianship of France.

One must be an Armenian in order to feel the depth and intensity of the bitterness and disappointment which filled the hearts of all the wandering Armenians from the Caucasus to Mesopotamia.

every armenian asked himself or herself was this to be our recompense in those very days september nineteen sixteen one of the agents of the german government in switzerland approached dr one of the representatives of the armenian committee of that place with the following proposal you armenians made a great mistake when you joined your fate to that of the allies it is time for you to rectify your mistaken policy your dreams with regard to historic armenia are unrealizable you may as well accustom yourselves to that fact and before it is too late you will do better to join the fate of your people with the german policies and remove the remnants of the armenian people to mesopotamia where the germans will put at the disposal of the armenians every means which will enable them to create for themselves a new and more fortunate fatherland under their german immediate protection in order to persuade his armenian opponent the german agent constantly reminded him of the agreement between england france and russia and especially of the hostile attitude of the russians up to that time towards the armenians the news of this german proposal reached the caucasus in december of the same year it was made the subject of serious consultation among the armenian leaders the writer of these lines was present at those conferences and his impression was this had there not been that superhuman adoration so peculiarly armenian which every armenian has for his ancestral home and recollections so sanctified by blood the german proposal would very likely have been accepted by the armenians at that psychological moment when their hearts were overflowing with bitterness and disappointment toward the russian government a member of the allied nations The outcome of those conferences was that we decided to continue our former policy toward the Entente, in spite of the base behavior of the Russians toward us, and at the same time to invite the serious attention of our great allies of the West to our hopeless

In the name of the Turkish government, the above-mentioned mission appealed to the Armenian Organization with the following proposition.

If the Armenians, the Turkish as well as the Russian Armenians, would give active cooperation to the Turkish armies, the Turkish government under a German guarantee would promise to create after the war an autonomous Armenia made up of Russian Armenia and the three Turkish vilayets of Erzurum, Van, and Bitlis, under the suzerainty of the Ottoman Empire.

The Turkish delegates, in order to persuade the Armenians to accept this proposal, informed them also that they, the Turks, had already won the cooperation of the Georgians and the Tartars, as well as the mountaineers of the northern Caucasus, and therefore the non-compliance of the Armenians under such circumstances would be very stupid and fraught with danger for them on both sides of the boundary between Turkey and Russia.

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The Turks knew very well that the Russian government received from the oil wells of Baku an annual income of more than two hundred million rubles, one hundred million dollars, a sum which is more than all the revenues of the bankrupt Turkish government put together, and they looked upon these financial resources as indispensable for the accomplishment of their plan of a Pan-Turanian empire.

Second, because the very plan of their Pan-Turanism had been introduced in Constantinople after 1908 by these very Tartars of Baku.

The commanders of the Turkish forces engaged in Persia and Van, Khalil and Jevded, understood very well why their plans failed in the month of April 1915, and that failure is the explanation of those frightful massacres which took place on the plains of Bitlis and Mosch in June of the same year, when the armies of the same Khalil and Jevded, defeated in Persia and Van, were forced to retreat under the pressure of the Armenian volunteers.

The third Turkish offensive took place early in July 1915.