April 8, 1915
Code
To the General Headquarters Hasankale
April 22, 1915
Investigations have been carried out upon the claims of the Armenian Patriarchate. Beşar Çeto has voluntarily gone to Azerbaijan and was murdered 3 moths ago. The Armenians, however, ambushed Mehmet Emin on his way to Azerbaijan. He is now in his house. None of the village attendants were killed by the gendarmes in Van. There is not a village named Ziko, where it is claimed that a child has been massacred. All the slander stems from the people who felt offended by the searches carried out by Bekir Sıtkı Bey and his volunteer battalion under the leadership of the governor of the district in three or four villages, and from their seizing of 52 guns in Pulur1. Killing of the three Armenian notables in Tercan, and collecting of money under the pretext of purchasing of guns and thus the initiations of atrocities on the Armenians have also added to the culmination of the slanders. The Armenians in the Pürük village of Suşehri have attacked on the unarmed volunteer forces that happened to be passing by on February 25 (1915). They have also opened fire on the forces sent from the city and wounded two soldiers, upon soldiers’ strong opposition they were punished, and in the searches carried out in the village 139 guns, along with 95 deserters, and 25 suspects have been caught. Thus, under the light of the evidence it can be said that all the claims are nothing but lies and pretexts. It has been understood that, all these were made with the aim of putting all the blame on the government. Hence, it has been understood that the information that the Patriarch obtained is far from being true. Today the Armenians in Sivas are partly, and the Armenians in Van are rebelling altogether. It is very natural that the other rebellions in the other cities will follow in the due time. The daily telegrams presented by the officials of the above-mentioned cities, as well as mine, all show that the Armenians are not defending themselves against the atrocities and enmity of the gendarmes in retaliation, as they have been claiming, but that they were in fact launching attacks without a cause. It has been understood from the investigations carried out by the Sivas Governor’s office that all the attacks, storing of the weapons, forming of rebellious groups and their setting up of turmoil in the rear regions of the army have all been preplanned by the committees like Daschnakzoutioun.
The mentioned investigations were also verified with the evidence of Armenian soldiers’s desertion either to the side of the enemy or their returning to their villages, and through the recent events in Van. Thus, it is proved that the Armenians were betraying the motherland, which was the land to be defended where people were living together, through their desertion of the army, their setting up of uprisings in Van and their showing signs of upheaval in Sivas, and by their helping, serving and acting jointly with the enemy, at the time when the Ottoman Army was engaged in a war. It was inevitable to severely punish the people who betrayed and took part in the uprisings. As it was presented in the telegrams dated April 20 and 21 (1915), it has been decided that, without hurting the feelings of the people who obeyed the state, by making use of all the people who can be of help and by calling the men between the ages of 46 and 50 into military service, all the traitors who took up arms against the state will be punished without showing mercy. If you would approve, I here by ask the conveying of the above-mentioned points to the Armenian Patriarch, who is charged with the duty of educating the people who go astray, and thus inspire the Armenians to obedience and loyalty to the state under his own leadership, rather than increasing the effects of the erroneous news of the traitor informers.
