1 enclosure
Your Excellency, further to my telegram of 15th inst., I have the honour of respectfully enclosing a report on the events in Zeitun.
I respectfully wish to repeat that all the preconditions for the possibility of a riot by the Armenians are missing. What is experienced as hostility by the Armenian side towards the Turkish government is basically no more than an outburst of the bitter mood caused by the fact that at the moment and possibly in future an intervention by Christian powers in favour of the Armenians has been ruled out.
In the year 1896, Zeitun became famous in a sense on the occasion of the first official Armenian massacre in so far as the population there succeeded in capturing the troops and their commander sent to destroy them.
Büge
Adana, 16 March 1915
The town of Zeitun, inhabited solely by Armenians and situated on the upper Seihun River belongs, administratively speaking, to the Vilayet of Aleppo. Its high, mountainous location, difficult to reach particularly in winter, makes the work of the Turkish authorities more difficult. The inhabitants of the town and the approximately thirty villages surrounding it, of which half are Armenian, live on agriculture and livestock breeding. Many of them are mule drivers who handle the heavy traffic in the mountainous part of the surrounding vilayets. Some of the poor elementary schools supported by the Armenian community cannot do anything to spiritually and culturally lift the people, so that the people live in a lack of knowledge and spiritual deficit, almost cut off from the rest of the world.
Governmental measures to levy taxes and recruit conscripts are met with stubborn resistance on the part of the locals, who do their utmost to escape from their duties. Military service, in particular, appears to them to be too difficult and, thus, desertion is a common phenomenon. The deserters flee into the mountains and survive on ambushing travellers and caravans. They carry out their rapacious acts without distinction for race or creed of those being ambushed. The attempts of the government to arrest them are usually without success, because their arrest would lead to the creation of new, vengeful deserters and bands of robbers.
About six months ago, while the country was being mobilized, the inhabitants of the town of Zeitun once again did not follow the government's demand that they enlist, so that it was forced to take hard measures. Several persons were taken to Aleppo, the centre of the Vilayet, and arrested there.
For this reason the Armenian Catholicos also drove to Aleppo to work on behalf of the innocent among them with the government. The government treated the prisoners so severely that one of them died from the lashes.
Despite this, the inhabitants of Zeitun were not intimidated and continued to refrain from doing military service. Several days ago they even fired some shots at the military commander there, but without the serious intention of killing him. It is said that they were only attempting to intimidate him. During these past few days, a gendarme was killed in Zeitun. Because of the inadequate transportation, it is not possible at present to determine exactly why and by whom this deed was done. It can, however, definitely be assumed that the question of recruitment was once again the leading motive which drove the locals to resistance against the government.
The inhabitants of the town of Zeitun, about 1200–1500 houses, live in discord with each other and have no sense of public spirit. Only the general poverty and danger joins the individuals in common action. They are, in part, equipped with old, inferior weapons which they use for their defence. They do not have the necessary organisation and leadership for offensive action.
The refusal to pay taxes and to fulfil military service is not an isolated occurrence in the large Ottoman Empire. It is everywhere, and you could say that it is to be found in each Vilayet. Some tribes in Lazistan, Kurdistan and in the areas where Arabs, Circassians live by themselves also usually do not pay taxes, nor do they do military service.
The Armenians in Zeitun wanted to give in to the government in so far as they suggested doing military service in their town, but this suggestion was not accepted by the government. In justification, the Armenians said that they did not feel safe because of the Moslem population living in their neighbourhood and, thus, could not permit that those men able to carry arms be removed. They assured that there was no need to fear aggressive behaviour on their part, particularly now that they had delivered their weapons to the government and were almost defenceless.
The fear of military service is generally found here everywhere, so that both Christians and Mohammedans attempt to free themselves of this in any way possible. One man pays "bedel" while another deserts. In other words, there is no enthusiasm among the population, be it Christian or Mohammedan, for military service.
Recently, the aversion among the Christians has been even greater, because they are used without exception as common construction workers, and no weapons are given to them.