VEHİB PAŞA'NIN ERMENİ MEZALİMİ İLE İLGİLİ RUS MEVKİDAŞLARINA YAZDIĞI TELGRAFLARA DAİR.

The Erzincan Armistice Agreement which ended the war on the Caucasian front was signed between the Ottoman Empire and the Soviet Republic of Russia on December 15, 1917 and the border line was determined. Afterwards, the Russian armies began to withdraw from Eastern Anatolia region, leaving their arms to the Armenian committees under the pretext of protecting the Armenian population in the region from Kurd population's attacks. However, the main aim was to form an Armenian State tied to Russia in the eastern part of Anatolia through arming the Armenian committees urgently. After the transfer of Russian armies from Erzincan to Erzurum, the security and public order in the region were completely destroyed. The Armenians benefitting from the authority gap, dreamed of establishing an Armenian state in Eastern Anatolia. In order to achieve that goal civil Muslims including women, men, elders, youth and children were killed in the region by the systematic torture. The Armenian committees also burned residential areas, locked people into mosques and houses and set them on fire. In order to put an end to this situation, the third Army commander Mehmed Vehib Pasha, the Russian Caucasian Army Commander General Odishelidze and General Prjevalski, sent a series of telegrams describing the severity of the situation with the aim to stop this violence immediately. The aim of this study to reveal reflections of the massacres committed by the Armenian committees in the eastern Anatolia on the correspondences of both Ottoman and Russian commanders. The study included evaluations of the Armenian atrocities in the region via Russian telegrams in the Georgian State Archives in Tbilisi. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]