World view

Wars and Epidemics...in 1915

by Prof. Dr. Türkkaya ATAÖV

In April 2006 we shall probably hear once more from some quarters abroad that the Muslim Turks “hurled their powerful armies on the peaceful and defenseless Christian Armenians”. We can also expect to hear dismissed as “Turkish propaganda” the view that much of the death in Anatolia occurred on account of epidemics. The facts would forcefully contradict both of these misleading assumptions. I have read and heard such statements often enough. Not only do Turkish and foreign documents refute them; a number of Armenian sources do so as well.

Less than a year ago, I was all ears when an American professor, who happened to be the director of a research center on genocide at Purdue University, told his audience that the Armenians, in the year 1915, were no more than weak, poor, unprotected and peace-loving women, children and old civilians facing the mighty weapons of the regular Turkish troops. The embarrassing but blatant truism is that the Armenian leadership formed large armies and fought against the Turks on several fronts under their own or Russian, French and British commanders.

Some Armenian sources, including the well-known UCLA professor R.G. Hovannisian, admit that their armies amounted to 150-160,000 soldiers plus guerillas, who were well armed with artillery and even war planes. H. Katchaznouni, independent Armenia’s first prime minister, states that they “were not afraid of war” because they thought they could win it. Their army “was well fed, well armed and well clothed.”  He added: “The Turks proposed that we meet and confer. We defied them.”  Their 1924 report to the U.S. Government (The Lausanne Treaty and Kemalist Turkey) quotes the appalling figure of “200,000 Armenians fighting as independent units or in the Allied ranks.” A 1926 report (The Lausanne Treaty, Turkey and Armenia) quoted an even higher figure: “more than 200,000.” This is 65,000 more than the number of U.S. fighting personnel present in Iraq.

Thirteen conflicts

Commanders like Gen. (Armen Garo) K. Pasdermajian published memoirs narrating exploits that include attacks, bloodshed, torture and pillage. There are more than enough references to Generals/Colonels Antranik, Areshian, Bakratuni, Dro, Hamazasp, Keri, Ossepian, Sebuh, Vardan, and others in the printed annals of Armenian writers like A.P. Hacobian and Gen. G. Gorganian. Some Armenian authors even asserted that the Allies owed their victory to the active belligerency of their armed people.

The Armenians indeed participated in the following wars or armed conflicts in the short but crucial eight years between 1914 and 1922: (1) the armed uprising behind the Turkish Eastern Front  and attacks on military and civilian targets, (2) guerilla warfare in conjunction with the invading Czarist Russian forces, and organization into regular armies, leading to the forceful seizure of Van, (3) general armed challenge to the regular Ottoman Army, (4) armed Armenian occupation of parts of Eastern Anatolia after the Bolshevik Revolution and the withdrawal of the Russians, (5) armed conflict with Turkish Gen. K. Karabekir’s 15th Army-Corps, (6) Armenian massacre of Turks, Kurds, Circassians and other Muslims while retreating, (7) armed clashes with the forces of the Ankara Government, (8) Armenian armed conflicts with the Caucasian Azeris, (9) Armenian armed conflicts with the Caucasian Georgians, (10) armed conflict between the Communist and the non-Communisr Armenians, (11) Armenian belligerent association with the British in the Suez Canal, Sinai, Palestine and the Syrian Fronts, (12) Armenian belligerent association with the French  forces in Adana and its adjoining territories, and (13) Armenian active support of the Greek armies invading Western Anatolia on 15 May 1919 and their opposition to the Turkish War of National Liberation.

The details of these wars appear in historical works, including those written by Armenian authors. The reports of the Russian officers Lieut.-Col. Tverdo-Khlebov, Capt. I. G. Plat and Dr. Khoreshenov and the scholarly works by Professors S. Shaw and R.F. Zeidner, may also be consulted. The statesmen and the commanders of the leading warring nations recognized their belligerency. Responsible Armenians, such Bogos Nubar, the head of the Armenian National Delegation at Versailles, officially wrote to the French Foreign Ministry that they had been “belligerents” during the war. To deny this wealth of material and confessions goes beyond mere disinformation.

Death by disease

The years 1914 and 1922 were also a period during which all of the inhabitants of Turkey had to live through war conditions. Many perished from hunger, cold, disease and epidemics. The mere mention of unsanitary predicaments is almost instantly chastised as  propaganda supposedly downgrading the actual loss of Armenian lives. Turkish scholarship does not deny the war-time conflict with the Armenians, including bloodshed. But it offers documentary evidence in respect to its origins and development taking into account all aspects of the drama, not excluding the Armenian revolt, the massacre of Muslims and other realities of war.

One of these concrete phenomena was the loss of life among Armenians and Muslims on account of the epidemics. Fatal bacteria and viruses do not differentiate according to the ethnicity or religion of their victims. What had been true of all wars throughout history was also valid on the Anatolian scene.

In past centuries, the number of people, including soldiers, who died from disease was generally more than the number of those killed by bullets or bayonets at the fronts. Such casualties, mainly caused by typhus, reached the high figure of 2,350,000 during the Napoleonic Wars. Fighting armies and citizens were decimated by bubonic plague  in the Ottoman-Russian War of 1828-29, by cholera and typhus in the Crimean War of 1854-56, and by smallpox in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71. During the war with Spain in 1811-14, the British losses from disease were three times greater than their combat losses. In 1877-78, the Russians and Turks, like the French and  Indo-Chinese during the former’s Tongking expedition, lost more lives to sickness than to weapons. In the American Civil War, the North suffered more casualties due to disease than to military engagements. The Spanish experienced the same during their expedition to Morocco. The American losses in the 1898 War with Spain were six times greater than the lives lost in actual combat.

The Ottoman experience

Conditions had improved in the developed Western societies in the eve of the First World War. Prophylactic measures and medical aid made it possible to control epidemics. Mass inoculations against cholera, typhus, and tetanus, the isolation of the sick with infectious diseases, the creation of many medical establishments, the introduction of a number of sanitary measures, and the development of transport considerably reduced the share of deaths from disease. Nevertheless, the Western countries continued to suffer. For instance, according to official figures (Statistics of the Military Effort of the British Empire) the British Army and Navy lost a total of 120,000 men from epidemics. The French losses totalled 179,000, chiefly from the Spanish flu. The Americans, late-comers to the active hostilities, lost 60,800 altogether. The Russian Army, which faced the Ottomans on the Eastern Front, lost 395,000 men. According to their official records (Wirtschaft und Statistik), the German casualties from diseases were 166,000. The other belligerents in both camps faced the same predicament.

The Ottoman Army losses were tremendous, the number of dead from diseases reaching figures unheard of in the 20th century wars. The German General Liman von Sanders, who acted as the inspector-general of the Ottoman armies, found the Turkish troops in a wretched state; some were even barefooted. American missionary-doctors (C.D. Usher and G.H. Knapp) recorded that the Turkish soldiers were “not protected from heat and cold, nor from sickness.” No less than 47% of the entire mobilized Turkish forces - of course only those able to reach a medical center - entered hospitals during those four years. Epidemics broke out, affecting not only Turkish military personnel, but also civilians – Turkish and Armenian.

Grave omissions

The heaviest toll was caused by malaria, followed by dysentery, high fever, typhoid, cholera, syphilis, tuberculosis, erytsipelas, and the like.  Even Hafız Hakkı Pasha (the Commander of the Turkish Eastern Front and a son-in-law of the Ottoman Sultan), the German Gen. C. von der Goltz (the Commander of the Ottoman Army in Iraq), and Sir Frederick Maude (the Commander of the British Expeditionary Army in Basra) died of cholera or typhus.

The Armenians at the time were very much aware of that reality. Fear of epidemics and resulting death was one of the reasons for their refusal to give 3,000 Armenian soldiers to the Ottoman Army, among their Van inhabitants. As an Armenian author (M.G.) recorded in his book on the revolt in Van, they admitted that people “contracted diseases in the trenches.” The Turkish medical facilities could not do much, even for the Sovereign’s son-in-law.

Armenian participation in wars, during which they killed and were killed in return, and the loss of Armenian lives on account of rampant epidemics are both inseparable parts of the drama, but are usually omitted from present-day evaluations.

( DIPLOMAT  -  April 2006  - Ankara )