RED=HANDED TURKS.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 161, 1 April 1908, Page 7

RED=HANDED TURKS.

MORE ATROCITIES. ; BLOODSHED IN ARMENIA. POWERS INSIST ON PUNISHMENT, rfy TELEGRAPH —PRESS ASSOCIATION —COPYRIGHT. Constantinople, March 30. Owing to Armenians attacking a supposed informer, Baslii Bazouks at Van indiscriminately assailed people'in tho streots, and killed thirty-three. An imperial force intervened and stopped the massacre. , ■ The Powers urgently insist that tho Porte should punish the guilty. ■ ■•••. PREVIOUS MASSACRES, : ' The Bnshi-13ar.oiilcs ; are noted for their brutality towards any populace they are set ; loose on. Their reputation dates from .the Bulgarian atrocities of 1875. The . Bushi-Bozouks are Turkish irregular, troops, genei ally reoiuitea among the Kurds and other Asiatic tribes in the Ottoman Empire. • 1 In .1895 and 189G terrible'; massacres of the Armenians': took' place in Anatolia, at /the hands of the Kurds, who'were probably aided, and certainly not ', hindered, by the regular Turkish garrison. \ln-1896, on the ground that a dangerous conspiracy was on -.foot, the authorities connived at a massacre of Armenians' iii Constantinople,; In which over _two thousand, aro. believed to have perisheth . This produced a strong protest' from the 'Powers, followed!by the re-establishment of some semr blance of ordei>. in the disturbed .district's..,.-.. Van is a town in Turkish Arnienia of considerable strategic I. importance, •being at the junction of the two military routes from, Asia Minor - and Mesopotamia; it commands., fllso the approaches from Persia. The population is about 30,000, the Mohammedans being somel.what in the majority. The Christian population is estimated at .13,500. There is a large Armenian normal schooL