TURKISH ATROCITIES

Taranaki Daily News, 11 December 1915, Page 6

TURKISH ATROCITIES

IMAGINARY AND REAL. CLEAN FIGHTING AND DIRTY ADMINISTRATION. (By Malcolm Ross, official New Zealand war correspondent.) 10th October. From time to time one continues to find in New Zealand and Australian newspapers references to alleged atrocities committed by the Turks in the fighting on the Gallipoli Peninsula. The statements are generally made in soldiers' letters, which, as often as not, eontain ludicrously inaccurate statements. In practically every case of alleged atrocity that has been charged against the Turk in the Gallipoli campaign, close enquiry has proved that the charge had no foundation in fact. In the first days of the severe hand-to-hand lighting, no doubt, things were done in hot blood that would not be done in the more regular fighting that has prevailed for months past; the character of the first lighting made it a necessity that little quarter should be given. There is one case in particular that one heard often quoted in the early days, and which, on the face of it, did seem a real one; but when one became aware of the surroundings circumstances it was clear that the Turks were quite blameless. The man referred to had simply put an end to his own miseries, as he previously had told his friends he would do under such circumstances.. In those days, also, there were stories of torture by. fire. In these cases it would be found that burns on bodies were simply the result of shell fire. In short, of the many stories one heard of Turkish atrocities, only in two or three cases did there appear to be any proof that there Tvas ground for complaint. Even in these few cases, we do not know what provocation may have been given. Oil the other hand, we know of many instances in which the Turks have treated our wounded and our prisoners in the most considerate and humane manner. They have given them of their own food and water, and have dressed and bandaged their wounds even when under our fire. There are, of course, many instances in which our dressing-stations have been hit by shell fire and by bullets, and cases in which our wounded being carried down to safety or to the evacuating jetties have been further wounded, and even killed, but we all recognise the probability that not a single instance has this been intentional. It was a necessary disability of the circumscribed area in which we had to conduct our operations. Similarly, our hospital ships have always been respected. We know from prisoners we have interrogated that both our wounded and our prisoners who have fallen into the hands of the enemy have been well treated; and these statements are confirmed by the word of the American Ambassador at Constantinople. The stories that appear to he current in Australia and New Zealand one never hears mentioned on the Gallipoli Peninsula! On the contrary, both officers and men have come to regard the Turk as a clean fighter, and as a focman worthy of their steel. MASSACRING THE ARMENIANS. But while the soldier Turk has "played the game" against us—he has not even condescended to use gas—the Administrator Turk has, in other quarters, been proving himself as brutal and as tyrannical as in the days when under the sway of the old Sultan a thousand Christian boys were taken yearly to form that legion of Janissaries that became in after years a terror to the enemies of the Moslem faith. In fact, at this very moment, the Turk is turning back the pages of history and reverting to the methods of the tyrants of a bye-gone age. Some few weeks ago I gave an account of the manner in which the Greeks were driven out of the coastal towns in Asia Minor in the neighbourhood of Mitylene, which, at that time, held between 70,000 and 80,000 refugees. In the soup-kitchens and refugee camps on the island one heard first-hand tales of plunder and rapine and murder done in cold blood at the hands of the authorities. One saw actual photographs that made one sad. In every case the blame was laid at the door of the German officers, who were said to be the prime instigators. Apparently, the men who sacked Louvain have sent their proto(types further e^st. THE MASSACRE CONTINUES. Recently, two prisoners df war, who have fallen into our hands here, have given to the' authorities a picture of the horrors that the Turks, under their German masters, are still putting execution in Eastern Asia Minor. For obvious reasons, the names of some of the towns and districts and of certain persons mentioned in the narrative are suppressed. It is a long story and can only be told in brief. The narrator is an Armenian soldier, who was for a time on the Caucasian front, and later, was sent to Gallipoli. He refers to the wholesale imprisonment and ill-treatment of the Armenian communities. The Bishop of Sivas was arrested and exiled to a distant place. The Governor-General gave orders to shoe his bare feet just like a horse, saying, sarcastically, "He is an old man, and the head of the Armenians of this district so, as an honour to his office, and out of respect for his old age. we must see to it that he does not go barefooted." This soldier was an eye-witness to the cruel deed. Of course, the unhappy bishop could not even move, so he was thrown into prison. In his native town of Zile this man found an intolerable state of affairs prevailing." The people were put in prison and received all sorts of ill-treat-ment—too horrible to put on paper. At last they were led out of town four abreast and tied together with ropes, ostensibly to be taken to the courtmartial at Sivas, but in reality to be massacred by their captors at another place. The men who did the grim work afterwards boasted of the bloody deed. This was in March last, and was the first of a series of massacres, that the Vali (of Sivas) had mapped out, for two days later nearly all the male population from 12 to 50 years of age were collected and put in prison, only to be taken out in companies of 100 and 200 and sent out on the awful expedition in different directions. The property of these unfortunates was commandeered by the Government. A town crier went through the market proclaiming: "Hear, people of the town! Whoever has in his possession property of any kind, cows, oun sheep, etc., belonging to an Armenian, partner or no partner, is hereby ordered to deliver up same to the Government. Anyone who hide 3 or smuggles out such property, or hides or protects any infidel, tvill be severely dealt with." Needless to say, a good deal of the money thus arbitrarily collected stuck to the fingers of the Vali! Here most of the men had been already massacred. The remainder were waiting for their turn in th«

prisons. As to the women, these, together with their children, were placed in oi carts, with few clothes and little bedding, and carried to a plain distant two hours' march. DSy after day, night after night, they were exposed to hunger and cold until it was thought they would accept a change of condition at any terms. They were approached and reasoned with by their captors in the following strain: "Now your husbands have all been killed. If you will accept the true religion you will be allowed to go home with your children. If you refuse iyou shall follow your husbands." The captives without exception chose the latter fate, which drew forth from the chief officer the remark that apparently it was a truth that a tough infidel would never become a Moslem. At the same time he gave orders to separate the young and put them in carts. While these were torn from their mothers and transferred to the carts, a company of gendarmes who were in ambuscade came out of their hiding place and bayoneted the mothers before the eyes pf the little ones. The devilish deed done, the children were conveyed back to town and taken to the police station, and from there to Sivas, to be kept as prisoners. Ihe boys then were separated from the girls, circumcised, and afterwards taken to "mesjids"—schools attached to a mosque—to be brought up as Mohammedans. Then a town crier went forth announcing that "now that Allah had been so good as to hand over these Giaours, it was both a 'savab' (virtue) and an 'imtiyas' (privilege) for any Moslem to go and have a look at these girls and select for himself." The Kaimakam himself went and picked up two of them for his daughters. Day after day the unhappy girls were there like so many sheep for sale in the market. One might well pause here for a retrospective glance at all that was expected from the regime of the Young Turkish Party under the aegis of German influence and kultur, and to speculate upon what would happen to the rest of the world should it come under the heel of the modern Hun, who has found in the murderers and ravishers of the Near East a fitting ally in this war. INCONCEIVABLE CRUELTY. The narrator, continuing his story of the atrocities in this village, said that the Muezzin went up to the bell-tower of their church to call the people to prayer, the bell having recently been taken down, and the town-crier meantime proclaimed that any persons who had the appetite to kill infidels was invited to come, the Government to furnish him with arms to do the killing. It was, he added, far better to become "gliazi" there than "sheliid" on the battlefield, At a village half an hour's walk away 400 Christians were butchered to the last man.

This prisoner, during his journeyinga —at one stage disguised—witnessed many cruelties. "All the way to Angora," he says, "it was one unbroken tragedy that was enacted before our eyes. Wherever Armenians, singly or in groups of four or five or more were found by Turkish Redifs or Bashibazouks, going to be enlisted they were attacked by them and killed right out. Farmers returning from their fields or even men who had delivered their tithes of the crops to the Government and were returning home were killed in cold blood by these would-be defenders of their country." WHAT HAPPENED AT ANGORA. Describing what happened at Angora, the man said, "An officer came to the barracks and ordered all the men to be lined up in the yard. Then he said 'I want 100 men skilled in the use of bavonets.' More than 100 came forward, and in batches of eight or ten began to patrol the town, obstensiblv to maintain order. We saw two priests and forty Armenians dragged by policemen towards the prison-house. Then the police began to enter the shops, and turning the tenants out into the streets, handcuff them, and take them to the prison-house. For three days this continued. Then the major came and asked for forty of the best bayoneters for a special purpose. The purpose was to convey the unfor-i tunate people—who came out of the prison gates to the number of 800, tied four abreast with ropes—to a spot where they were butchered by a hundred of the gendarmerie. What I saw," he added, "was about 100 human wolves plunge among about ten times as many defenceless beings, also human, and tear them to pieces with bayonets. The Armenians were unable to run away; they were tied together, four by four, and utterly exhausted. The assassins simply nailed them to the ground. One strange thing was that we found the road on the way back strewn with money. The prisoners, knowing well what was in store for them, had thrown their money away. There was no shooting. Preference was given to bayoneting as the quietest method. Two days after this, for a whole day and a-half, some twenty carriages were kept busy conveying women and children to the railway station. They were placed like so many cattle in an enclosure, with guards ail round. Great crowds gathered about the place. An officer made a speech to the effect that these women and girls were now public property. Half-a-dozen policemen got inside the enclosure, separated the boys, and carried them to the public garden. The younger girls were also brought back to the city, while the marriageable ones were placed in the Tasli Khan caravanserai at Angora, for exhibition. Married women were sent to a prison-liouse. What became of them I cannot tell, as I left Angora soon after; but I presume they did not fare any better than their sisters at Zile. A few days later we were sent to the front. I shall not go over the details of our journey to Constantinople, suffice it to say that the same scenes were presented, the same atrocities repeated everywhere." [Note by Censor.—"Certain place names, the publication of which cannot lead to the identification of American sympathisers, and is therefore harmless, have been inserted in this article by the General Staff."]