gunduz-aktan-kitap-soyledikleri-ve-yazdiklari

WHAT HE SAID AND WHAT HE WROTE
can relocate the Armenians somewhere far from the war zone. The
date was the 2nd May 1915, right at the beginning of the entry of
the Russian armies into Anatolia, and Talat Pasha, without seeking
the backing of the Council of Ministers, opted for the second option
and started the relocation process. However, in the next two weeks
I think, the cabinet endorsed his decision.
To most of the Ottoman ruling class, that was the right decision
because relocation would be much less costly from human and
material perspectives. If you go through all these archives, you can
see hundreds, perhaps thousands of examples of how to protect
the Armenians in transit from eastern then central-eastern parts of
Anatolia towards Syria. You can see the hundreds of instructions
to that effect, detailing the sort of measures to be taken to protect
them. But at the end of the day there were many, many casualties.
Perhaps, to a certain extent, neglect by the Ottoman armies to
organise the relocation or the lack of personnel on their part
because the Ottomans were fighting on three fronts. At the same
time there were war-induced casualties. During relocation, many
started dying after three or four days because of dehydration. The
children and the elderly, especially, become quite vulnerable to
epidemics. Let us not forget about the epidemics in those times. Of
the 60 million people that died in the First World War, one fourth
-that is to say 15 million- died of epidemics. Quite obviously, this
percentage was higher for the Ottoman Empire because there was
one bed for 8,000 people and one doctor for 150,000. Imagine the
conditions ! We do not know exactly how many Armenians were
killed during the relocation. But we know one thing for certain:
most of the Armenians that lost their lives during the First World
War died of causes other than relocation. Some of them might have
died because of forced migrations during the wartime. The Russian
armies advanced and Muslims and Turks, 900,000 of them, left
their houses, uprooted by the Russian armies and by the Armenian
guerrilla forces. After a while, they died in migrations because of a
number of reasons such as the terrain, climate, epidemics and
famine. Therefore, the figures should be treated cautiously. There
might be reasons other than relocation as I said.
Now here "in whole or in part" is an important indication to
understand the situation. Ottomans relocated mostly the Orthodox
Gregorian Armenians, who were usually living in the eastern part
of Turkey and who were also religiously close to Russia. Whereas
many Protestant and Catholic Armenians have not been subjected
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