Turkey

Manawatu Times, Volume XL, Issue 13209, 28 September 1915, Page 5

Turkey

Sept. 25. It is reported that the Germans, acting in conjunction with Enver i'asha and Talaat Bey, are prepared to depose the Sultan of Turkey, and to exile Prince Yussuf Izzqjl-din, the heirapparent, because they are anti-Ger-man. The Old Turk Party oppose the suggestion. LONDON, Sept. 26. An awful story of cruelty to Armenians is related by eye witnesses to a Daily Chronicle correspondent. He says:— History does not record such scenes. Besides many thousands killed, half a million Armenians were deported at the beginning of last April. The first step was disarming, under the pretext of which many murders and torturings were committed. Then the victims were imprisoned en masse and deportations followed, accompanied by massacres. Scarcely a man was left by the Turks in the Kharput province. They marketed the remainder, from the highest functionary to the simplest peasant, and bought the wives, forcibly converting them to Islamisni. Little children put upon the roads wandered famished until many died of starvation. Similar scenes were enacted in the Diarbekir province. Some facilities were granted to the deporters in other provinces, but robbers and peasants looted and stripped caravans, killed the few remaining [youths, abducted the ' women and girls, and whipped the old women along the roads until they dropped from exhaustion and died of hunger. An eye witness states that the women who were deported from the Erzeroum province were left in the Kharput plain foodless and died at the rate of fifty and sixty daily. THE AWFUL AKMENIAN ATROCITIES. Received 9.40 p.m. LONDON, Sept. 26. A little Armenian girl states that when a caravan arrived at the Governor's office at Sarikichila children were torn from their mother's arms and the caravan was foceed to continue without them. As they arrived in each village the women were exposed in the Governor's office to allow Massulmans to take their pick. The caravan starting from Papert gradually dwindled and finally the remaining women and children were thrown into the Euphrates befoTe Erzinga. Two German Red Cross nurses were so shocked that they resigned and reported the atrocities to the Constantinople Embassy. The roads in many provinces are littered with corpses. A Mussulman traveller states that during a nine hours' journey from Malatia to Sivas he encountered only the corpses of men, women and Armenian soldiers. The same fate awaited those at Erzecoum and Diarbekir where they were sent to work on the roads and then butchered. Eighteen hundred from Kharput were mas-sacr-ed. Many Armenians sought to be converted to Islanysm to escape their co-religionists' fate. Those at ©ivas were notified that they must first surrender their children for education. The authorities at Kharput ordered that women desiring conversion must first marry a Mussulman. Many threw themselves into the Euphrates with their babies. Evidently Government are determined to end the Armenian question once for all by extermination.