VAR: Azerbaijani Genocide quotes, Muslim Genocide of 2.5 million by Armenians

Brief compilation of Armenian admissions and Western sources on the genocide of the Muslim (Azerbaijani) population of the Caucasus region in the early 20th century, conducted mainly on the territory of today's Armenia, as well as Naxcivan, Zangezur and other regions of Azerbaijan. All references to "Tartar" and/or "Muslim" mean ethnic Azerbaijani population. Nevertheless, the casualties were sustained by all Muslims of the region: Azerbaijanis, Turks, Kurds, Circassians, etc.

Confession of a Dashnak in 1918 on his activities in Basar-Kechar region."I killed Muslims by every means possible. Yet it is sometimes a pity to waste bullets for this. The best way is to gather all of these dogs and throw them into wells and then fill the wells with big and heavy stones, as I did. I gathered all of the women, men and children, threw big stones down on top of them. They must never live on this earth." *A. Lalayan, "Revolutsionniy Vostok (Revolutionary East)" No: 2-3, Moscow, 1936.* Quoted from Richard Hovannisian, Armenia on the Road to Independence-Berkeley, 1967, p. 41-42.		''An appropriate analogy with the Jewish Holocaust might be the systematic extermination of the entire Muslim population of the independent republic of Armenia which consisted of at least 30-40 percent of the population of that republic. The memoirs of an Armenian army officer who participated in and eye-witnessed these atrocities was published in the U.S. in 1926 with the title 'Men Are Like That.' Other references abound.'' Rachel A. Bortnick - The Jewish Times - June 21, 1990.
"The Armenians did exterminate the entire Muslim population of Russian Armenia as Muslims were considered inferior to the Armenians by the prominent leaders of the Dashnaks." Mikael Kaprilian, 1919.		"We have never denied the Armenian crime of genocide inflicted upon 2.5 million Muslim people between 1914 and 1920." Agop Zahoryan, 'Voices of Agonies', p. 91.
"We closed the roads and mountain passes that might serve as ways of escape for the Turks and then proceeded in the work of extermination. Our troops surrounded village after village. Little resistance was offered. Our artillery knocked the huts into heaps of stone and dust and when the villages became untenable and inhabitants fled from them into fields, bullets and bayonets completed the work." Ohanus Appressian, 1919. (from "Men Are Like That" p. 202.) "only 1,500 Turks remained in Van the rest having been slaughtered." (Armenian newspaper Gochnak, published in the United States, May 24, 1915. Cited from Hovannisian, Richard G.: Armenia on the Road to Independence, 1918. University of California Press (Berkeley and Los Angeles), 1967, p. 13.)		"In Soviet Armenia today there no longer exists a single Turkish [Azerbaijani] soul.'" Sahak Melkonian, 1920. "Kill Turks and Kurds wherever you find them and in whatever circumstances you find them. Turkish children also should be killed as they form a danger to the Armenian nation." Hamparsum Boyadjian, former Ottoman parliamentarian, led the Armenian forces who ravaged Turkish villages behind the lines under the nickname "Murad", 1914. Cited from M. Varandian, "History of the Dashnaktsutiun," p. 85.
Memoirs of an American officer who witnessed the genocide of 2.5 million Muslim people by Armenian General Dro, who later cooperated with Hitler and Nazi SS in the formation of the 20,000 strong "Armenian Legion": 'How many people lived there?' 'Oh, about eight hundred.' He yawned. 'Did you see any Turk officers?' 'No, sir. I was in at dawn. All were Tartar civilians in mufti.' "The lieutenant dozed off, then I, but in the small hours a voice woke me - Dro's. He stood in the starlight bawling out an officer. Anyone keelhauled so long and furiously I'd never heard. Then abruptly Dro broke into laughter, quick and simple as child's. Both were a cover for his sense of guilt, I thought, or hoped. For somehow, despite my boast of irreligion, Christian massacring 'infidels' was more horrible than the reverse would have been." "Thank you for a lot, Dro,' I said to him back in camp. 'But now I must leave.' We shook hands, the captain said 'A bientot, mon camarade.' And for hours the old Molokan scout and I plodded north across parching plains. Like Lot's wife I looked back once to see smoke bathing all, doubtless in a sack of other Moslem villages by the Armenian Army up to the line of snow that was Iran." Robert Dunn, " World Alive, A Personal Story." Crown Publishers, Inc., New York, 1952, p. 363.		"Europeans in Turkey have agreed that the immediate aim of the agitators was to incite disorder, bring about inhuman reprisals, and so provoke the intervention of the powers. For that reason, it was said that, they operated by preference in areas where the Armenians were in hopelessly minority, so that reprisals would be certain. One of the revolutionaries told Dr. Hamlin, the founder of Robert College, that Henchak bands would: 'watch their opportunity to kill Turks and Kurds, set fire to their villages and then make their escape into the mountains. The enraged Moslems will then rise, and fall upon the defenseless Armenians and slaughter them with such barbarity that Russia will enter in the name of humanity and Christian civilization and take possession.' "When the horrified missionary denounced the scheme as atrocious and infernal beyond anything ever known, he received this reply: 'It appears so to you, no doubt; but we Armenians have determined to be free. Europe listened to Bulgarian horrors and made Bulgaria free. She will listen to our cry when it goes up in the shrieks and blood of millions of women and children... We are desperate. We shall do it.'..." William I. Langer (The Diplomacy of Imperialism, New York -Alfred A. A. Knoph-pp.l57-160).
"When the Russian armies invaded eastern Anatolia after the Sarikamish massacre of 1914, their columns were preceded by battalions of Armenian Army, both from the Caucasus and from eastern Anatolia. One of these was commanded by a certain Andranik, a blood-thirsty adventurer. These Armenian soldiers committed all kinds of excesses and massacres, more than six hundred thousand Kurds being killed by the Armenians between 1915 and 1916 in the eastern vilayets of Turkey." Hassan Arfa, "The Kurds" (London, 1969), pp. 25.		pp. 17-18. "It seems that terrorism against their own co-nationals has been a prominent part of the revolutionary activities of the Dashnag leaders of the Caucasus. Organized to fight the Turks, these chieftains have been more successful in their fight against their Armenian opponents in Turkey, and the Caucasus, very often defenseless and innocent." p. 38. "The fact remains, however, that the leaders of the Turkish Armenian section of the Dashnagtzoutune did not carry out their promise of loyalty to the Turkish cause when the Turks entered the war...and a call was sent for Armenian volunteers to fight the Turks on the Caucasian front." "Thousands of Armenians from all over the world, flocked to the standards of such famous fighters as Antranik, Kery, Dro, etc. The Armenian volunteer regiments rendered valuable service to the Russian Army in the years of 1914-15-16." K. S. Papazian, "Patriotism Perverted," Baikar Press, Boston, 1934.
Source: "Men Are Like That" by Leonard Ramsden Hartill. The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Indianapolis, 1926, 305 pages. (Memoirs of an Armenian officer who participated in the genocide of 2.5 million Muslim people) _Foreword:_ "For example, we were camped one night in a half-ruined Tartar mosque, the most habitable building of a destroyed village, near the border of Persia and Russian Armenia. During the course of evening I asked Ohanus if he could tell me anything of the history of the village and the cause of its destruction. In his matter of fact way he replied, Yes, I assisted in its sack and destruction, and witnessed the slaying of those whose bones you saw today scattered among its ruins." p. 15 (second paragraph) "The Tartars [Azerbaijanis] were, for the most part, poor. Some of them lived in villages and cultivated small farms; many of them continued in the way of life of their nomadic forefathers. They drove their flocks and herds from valley to valley, from plain to mountain, and from mountain to plain, following the pasturage as it changed with the seasons. They ranged from the salt desert shores of the Caspian Sea far into the mighty Caucasus Mountains. Even the village Tartars are a primitive people, only semicivilized. I can see now that we Armenians frankly despised the Tartars, and, while holding a disproportionate share of the wealth of the country, regarded and treated them as inferiors." p. 20 (second paragraph) "Our men armed themselves, gathered together and advanced on the Tartar section of the village. There were no lights in the houses and the doors were barred, for the Tartars suspected what as to happen and were in great fear. Our men hammered on the doors, but got no response; whereupon they smashed in the doors and began a carnage that continued until the last Tartar was slain. Throughout the hideous night, I cowered at home in terror, unable to shut my ears to the piercing screams of the helpless victims and the loud shouts of our men. By morning the work was finished." p. 202 (first and second paragraphs). "Some of the Tartars escaped of course. They found refuge in the mountains or succeeded in crossing the border into Turkey. The rest were killed. And so it is that the whole length of the borderland of Russian Armenia from Nakhitchevan to Akhalkalaki from the hot plains of Ararat to the cold mountain plateau of the North were dotted with mute mournful ruins of Tartar villages. They are quiet now, those villages, except for howling of wolves and jackals that visit them to paw over the scattered bones of the dead." p. 218 (first and second paragraphs) "We Armenians did not spare the Muslims. If persisted in, the slaughtering of Tartars, the looting, and the rape and massacre of the helpless become commonplace actions expected and accepted as a matter of course. I have been on the scenes of massacres where the dead lay on the ground, in numbers, like the fallen leaves in a forest. Muslims had been as helpless and as defenseless as sheep. They had not died as soldiers die in the heat of battle, fired with ardor and courage, with weapons in their hands, and exchanging blow for blow. They had died as the helpless must, with their hearts and brains bursting with horror worse than death itself."		Source: "Adventures in the Near East, 1918-1922" by A. Rawlinson, Jonathan Cape, 30 Bedford Square, London, 1934 (First published 1923), 287 pages. (Memoirs of a British officer who witnessed the Armenian genocide of 2.5 million Muslim people) p. 184 (second paragraph) "I had received further very definite information of horrors that had been committed by the Armenian soldiery in Kars Plain, and as I had been able to judge of their want of discipline by their treatment of my own detached parties, I had wired to Tiflis from Zivin that 'in the interests of humanity the Armenians should not be left in independent command of the Moslem population, as, their troops being without discipline and not under effective control, atrocities were constantly being committed, for which we should with justice eventually be held to be morally responsible'." p. 177 (third paragraph) "Armenian troops, who, having pillaged and destroyed all the Moslem villages in the plain...." "Caravans of refugees were in the meanwhile constantly arriving from the plain, from which the whole Moslem population was fleeing with as much of their personal property as they could transport, seeking to obtain security and protection..." p. 178 (first paragraph) "In those Moslem villages in the plain below which had been searched for arms by the Armenians everything had been taken under the cloak of such search, and not only had many Moslems been killed, but horrible tortures had been inflicted in the endeavour to obtain information as to where valuables had been hidden, of which the Armenians were aware of the existence, although they had been unable to find them." p. 179 (first paragraph) "Shortly afterwards the head of the miserable column appeared. There were in all about 200 persons, mostly old men and women and children, with a few ox-carts, ponies, and donkeys, carrying all their worldly possessions, except a few sheep that they were driving before them. Their leader interviewed Bekir Bey, and was told to keep farther on into the hills, where he would be able to cross the frontier into Turkey unmolested by his enemies." p. 181 (first paragraph) "the Armenians from the plain were attacking the Kurdish line with artillery, with probably a large force in support." p. 175 (first paragraph) "The arrival of this British brigade was followed by the announcement that Kars Province had been allotted by the Supreme Council of the Allies to the Armenians, and that announcement having been made, the British troops were then completely withdrawn, and Armenian occupation commenced. Hence all the trouble; for the Armenians at once commenced the wholesale robbery and persecution of the Muslem population on the pretext that it was necessary forcibly to deprive them of their arms. In the portion of the province which lies in the plains they were able to carry out their purpose, and the manner in which this was done will be referred to in due course."