Population
On the eve of World War I, 35,825 Armenians lived in 32 localities of this kaza, which was about half of the total population.[1] They possessed 36 churches, one monastery, and 22 schools with an enrolment of approximately 5,000 pupils.[2]
At the beginning of the 20th century, the Armenian churches of Surb Minas and Surb Astvadzadzin (Holy Mother of God) were located in the village of Boğazlıyan, which had about 2,000 Armenian inhabitants. They were engaged in agriculture, cattle breeding and handicrafts. There was a church-school in the village.[3]
“The recently founded village [of Boğazlıyan] in which the prefect resided, (…) lay in the middle of an immense plain. Two thousand Armenians which roots in Sivas and Hungary lived in the ‘upper quarter’ of Boğazlian. Two adjacent Armenian villages lay to the south: Beyloren (pop. 750) and Gurden (pop. 1,000). To the northeast was the village of Rumdigin [Rumtikin]: the 2,000 Armenians who lived here represented two-thirds of the population. Kiurkci (pop. 200) was still further north.
Thirty kilometers east of Boğazlian, in Iyedli, there lived around 1,500 Armenians, most of them wine makers. Karahalı, a stone’s throw away, had a population of 2,000, Uzunlu, 3,000, and Gövenci, 550. The biggest Armenian villages in the rest of the kaza were Çakmak (pop. 1,000), Çokradan (pop. 1,000), Fakralı (pop. 800), Melez (pop. 350), Brunkışla (pop. 2,000), Keller (pop. 1,500), Eylence (pop. 600), Kümküyü (pop. 900), Kediler (pop. 500), Şarlı (pop. 500), Saçli (pop. 600), Magaroğlu (pop. 450), Karabüyük (pop. 800), Pöhrenk (pop. 800), Çat (pop. 3,500), Terzilli (pop. 2,000), Bebek (pop. 1,300) Karayağub (pop. 900), Sarı Hamza (pop. 1,250), Daşlıgetçit (pop. 250), Mentepe (pop. 1,100), Urnec (pop. 1,200), and Çatak (pop. 1,025).”[4]
Destruction
From mid-July to 7 August 1915 the 48 Armenian villages of the sancak of Yozgat—some 40,000 souls—were emptied of their males, then of their women and children, under the direct supervision of Kemal Bey, the interim prefect. The latter set up a huge killing field near the village of Keller, where these Armenians died at the knife at the hands of Special Organization bandit squads directed by Major Tevfik.[5]
“According to an Armenian witness, every day, in methodical fashion, the çetes [irregulars] dealt with five villages. They proceeded to arrest both the men who were exempt from military service and also the notables, who were all tied up und put to death outside the villages, after which their bodies were stripped and thrown into mass graves. The çetes then rounded up the males over 12, who were led off to a ‘slaughter-house for adolescents’, located in Hacılar, halfway between Akrak Maden and Boğazlian. Thereafter, the rest of the population – women and girls of all ages, old men, and boys 12 and under – was assembled in a field near the village. Here the children were separated form their mothers; the women who tried to interfere with these abductions were killed on the spot. Kızılbaş and Çerkez villagers from the vicinity were thereupon invited to come loot the abandoned villages. With the help of pack animals, they took all the available goods from the villages and the helped massacre the survivors and burn the bodies. A number of children of both sexes up the age of 11 were taken off to the city [Yozgat] and placed in ‘orphanages.’”[6]
The few survivors have taken refuge in different countries.
Report From the Consul in Adana (Büge) to the German Reichskanzler (Bethmann Hollweg), 1 Oct 1915
Enclosure 7
People making a statement:
Mariam, wife of Ohannes from Aladja [Alaca] (Angora), 38 years old,
Sultane, wife of Harutiun from Aladja (Angora), 28 years old,
Güstüma, wife of Meliko from Yozgad [Yozgat] (Angora), 30 years old,
made the following statement to me on 11 September 1915:
“On the deportation journey from Yozgad to Bogazlayan [Boğazlıyan] (in the Vilayet of Angora), we were eyewitnesses as about one hundred Turkish soldiers shot several hundred Armenians from Yozgad and Sungurlu, all men, among them two priests, in a valley 4 hours south of Yozgad on 20 August of this year; they beat them to death with the butts of their rifles and annihilated all of them without exception.
On the evening of 22 August, our caravan, consisting of 700 people, all of them deported from Orta-Köj [Ortaköy], Hadji-Köy [Haciköy] and Aladja [Alaca], arrived in Tépé Han (Vilayet Angora), where the men were first interned in a khan. Then the gendarmes raided all of them, group by group, took away their cash and handed them over to the murderous gangs. The gendarmes were also involved in the murderous deed by shooting four people from Hadji-Köy in front of the women.”
The names of the victims known to the women making the statement are:
Meliko, 35 years old
Harutiun, 30 years old
Donik, 60 years old
Nishan, 50 years old
Garabed, 25 years old
Kevork, 20 years old
Krikor, 20 years old
Garabed, 23 years old
Sarkis, 30 years old
Sarkis, 28 years old
Nazar, 14 years old
Ufan, 30 years old
Iskender, 13 years old
The gendarmes took the two last-named people to their mother and promised her that they would be freed for ransom. Although they received fifteen Turkish Lira, they shot them in front of their mother.
All of the gendarmes from Yozgad, Bogazlayan, Erkelet, Indjé Su [Ince Su], Karahissar [Karahisar] and Nigdé who accompanied the deportees’ procession took away all the cash bit by bit and gave all the valuables to the irregulars and rapacious gangs. After arriving in Nigdé, one of the abovementioned women, Sultané, sold her pack animal for 80 piastres. The woman was robbed by a gendarme of even this amount, as well as 200 piastres hidden in her knapsack, together with the knapsack.
On 10 September of this year, one of the women from Aladja gave birth along the stretch from Tarsus to Adana. The women hurrying to assist her, including the same woman already mentioned, Sultané, were lashed and beaten by the gendarmes and forced to move on, wanting to leave the woman in childbed lying in the open on the road. It was only with the greatest difficulty that the women were able to bring their companion to Adana.
The government gave the deportees no food or accommodation; on the contrary, the widowed women and orphaned children were treated so harshly by the gendarmes everywhere that they were not even permitted to quench their thirst and could only have a cup of water upon payment of 10 – 20 paras. Mrs. Sultané’s two-year-old daughter died of thirst, and Mariam’s two-year-old boy died of thirst and hunger.
Enclosure 8
People making a statement:
Séféré Göshbekian from Aladja (Angora)
Mardiros Bogossian from Aladja (Angora)
made almost the same statement to me on 11 September of this year as the women Mariam, Sultané and Güstüma had done, and added that they had been eyewitnesses along the way as the gendarmes and soldiers from Tersili [Terzilli] massacred and killed several hundred people from Yozgad and the surrounding area, all of them male, in a valley several hours south of Yozgad.
These people making a statement also told me that they saw no male Armenians along the way in the towns of Tchat [Chat], Burun–Kishla, Tchakhmakhzadé [Çahmahzade] and Keller, and everywhere along the way they learned that all of them had been killed.
It was supposedly the Kaymakam from Bogazlayan [Boğazlıyan] who ordered the massacre in all of these towns.
Excerpted from: Political Archives of the German Foreign Office – http://www.armenocide.net/armenocide/armgende.nsf/$$AllDocs/1915-10-01-DE-006