90 years on, an Armenian’s escape from Ottoman Turkey

Agence France Presse
April 21 2005

21/04/2005 AFP

YEREVAN, April 21 (AFP) – 5h38 – One of a handful of survivors of
Turkish massacres against Armenians during World War I, Varazdat
Arutyunian was six years old when the Ottoman army began its expulsion
of Armenians from his home town Van in present day Turkey.

“My memories are sharpened during the spring, the trees were also
in bloom in the spring of 1915 when the Turks attacked our city,”
the 96-year-old architect told AFP in his home in the Armenian capital.

As Armenia prepares to mark the 90th anniversary of a slaughter that
is among the most painful episodes of its ages-old history in which
it claims some 1.5 million were killed, only an estimated 600 people
remain in the republic who can still tell the tale first hand.

April 25, 1915 marks the day that the Ottoman Turkish authorities
rounded up and later killed hundreds of Armenian intellectuals living
in Anatolia in the start of what Armenia and many other countries
say was an organized genocidal campaign to eliminate Armenians from
the Ottoman Empire.

Turkey denies a genocide ever took place saying that 300,000 Armenians
and thousands of Turks were killed in “civil strife” during World
War I, when the Armenians rose against their Ottoman rulers and sided
with invading Russian troops.

In preparation for the anniversary, Armenia has organized a series
of seminars, exhibitions and film screenings that will culminate in
a massive march through the capital with which Armenia hopes to draw
international attention to genocide claims and put pressure on Turkey.

It was soon after the first massacre that Turks entered Van and a
number of other Armenian settlements with orders to send Armenians on
a forced march through the Der El Zor desert where untold thousands
would perish of deprivation and attacks.

As a feeble initial Armenian resistance failed and Russian troops
pulled back Arutyunian’s family fled with Russian forces and countless
other families.

“When we crossed bridges we were attacked by Kurds and Turks. Many
jumped into the river to try to swim across but drowned or were struck
by bullets. We stopped frequently to bury those who died of hunger
and exhaustion,” Arutyunian recalled.

When the family crossed the river Arax and joined thousands of other
refugees in the valley of Mount Ararat where Armenian’s present day
border with Turkey lies, many members of his family began to succumb
to Typhoid and Cholera.

Of his nine family members Arutyunian was one of only three to survive,
including his mother and a brother.

“Many people say 1.5 million people were killed by the Turks in Turkey,
but no one has ever counted how many people died in total as a result
of the genocide,” Arutyunian said.

Arutyunian went on to get a university degree and study Armenian
architecture in eastern Anatolia, but in the years that followed
World War I he would find himself selling drinks as a water-boy and
cleaning shoes on the streets of the Georgian capital Tbilisi.

Today the white-haired elder has trouble standing-up but continues
to smoke his favorite brand of cigarettes, called Van, in honor of
his hometown.

“These are the only cigarettes I smoke, they help quench the longing
for the places of my youth,” which are today located across a closed
border in Turkey.

“I lived under the Czar, and during the Soviet Union, and through the
years of our country’s independence. I belong to a generation which
becomes less numerous every day and will soon disappear completely,”
Arutyunian said.

“Before that happens I would like to see a world which condemns evils
against humanity in solidarity, including against Armenians.”