The Yozgat Trial Series
•   This series dealt with the massacres in the district of Yozgat, which in the Ottoman provincial administration setup represented the unit of Sancak (district) within the boundaries of the province (vilayet) of Ankara. The district itself comprised three administrative subunits called kazas (counties), namely Bogazliyan, Akdag Madeni, and Yozgat, the latter representing the center of the district and located at a distance of some 110 miles east of Ankara. According to Ottoman statistics, of a total pre-war Armenian population of 33,133 in Yozgat district, 31,147 were "deported." Of these, 3208 were from Akdag Madeni kaza, 13,259 from Yozgat kaza, and 14,680 from the 15 villages of Bogazliyan kaza. The majority of these Armenians lived dispersed in the districts 48 villages. Their community life centered around 14 churches and 63 schools they maintained as a religious minority. At the first trial of the series (February 5, 1919), the Attorney General disclosed that out of about 1,800 Armenians from the town of Yozgat proper only 88 survivors could be counted.
The Yozgat trials examined "the deportations and massacres" in 18 sittings be-tween February 5 and April 7, 1919. At the 12th sitting (March 6), the trials were interrupted, to continue on March 24 when the Tribunals chief judge and the attor-ney general were replaced and new court martial statutes introduced in connection with the installation of Damad Ferids first Cabinet. Ferid resolved to be more rigor-ous in the task of prosecution. There were three defendants. At the 17th sitting the chief judge declared that the trial of one of them, 36-year-old Feyyaz Ali, a govern-mental estates official (evkaf memuru) was being detached for inclusion in a projected second series of Yozgat trials. Of the remaining two, Mehmet Kemal, the 35-year-old ex-kaymakam (sub-district governor) of Bogazliyan and subsequently interim district governor of Yozgat, was the principal defendant; his co-defendant was 44-year-old Major Mehmet Tevfik, commander of Yozgats gendarmery battalion. These defen-dants were represented altogether by six defense attorneys. All three defendants were subjected to pre-trial interrogations, both written and oral, during which they made a number of confessions. The defense counsel challenged the jurisdiction of the Tribunal, arguing that since the alleged crimes were perpetrated in distant Yozgat they could not be tried in Istanbul. The counsel for Mehmet Kemal, the principal defendant, argued that since his client had already been tried on identical charges it was unlawful to try him a second time. A prompt investigation, however, revealed that Kemal had been tried in absentia not on deportation and massacre charges, but rather embezzlement, for personally appropriating the riches of the Armenian victims. Sentenced to three months of prison and acquitted upon his request for a retrial, the Court now rejected Kemals arguments: at issue now was a capital crime. The Court maintained that Is-tanbul was the proper venue since orders for the massacres came from Istanbul. In his opening remarks Attorney-General Sami launched a two-pronged attack against both the victims and the perpetrators. He blamed the former for provoking the atrocities, the April-May 1915 "events of Van" (Van Vakuatt), when the Arme-nians of that eastern province rose up to defend their lives after the governor had begun to massacre them. The Armenians were "separatists" who transgressed their religious community status to clamor for equal rights and seek the intervention of foreign powers; they eventually became tools of these powers. This stimulated the antagonism of the Muslims and culminated in the Deportation Law in May 1915. Sami then inveighed against "the government officials big and small" who perpetrated "heartrending crimes against the Armenians in the course of implementing this law." He added that "an order from above is only then executable when it is in accord with ones conscience." Describing them as "crimes against humanity," Sami concluded that the task of this Court was "to establish these crimes and punish the guilty.
•   The Armenian lawyers appearing as "personal prosecutors" (muddei §ahsi) and as "private complainants" (miifteki) in the next sitting (February 8) strongly objected to the Attorney Generals characterization of the Armenians. Humayak Khosrovian  categorically rejected the charge of Armenian provocation, insisting that all the Armenians wanted was "justice, coupled with security, a goal which neither the Tanzimat reforms nor Sultan Abdul Hamit could attain." Rather than labeling the Armenians tools of foreign powers, people should look at German Emperor Wilhelm II and others as responsible for the Armenian tragedy,  the victims of which he placed at 1.2 million. Addressing the issue of the Van events, he accused Sami of disingenuousness, since the leaders whom he had accused of "sabotaging" the Turkish war effort had actually been trying to pacify the region, and had been treacherously killed by the Van authorities, thereby "driving the Armenian population of that province to desper-ate self-defense." Even if the charge were true, there was no moral or legal justifica-tion to victimize for it the entire Armenian population of Yozgat, whose "innocence regarding sabotage had been established."
In light of these "distortions and inaccuracies," and the injection of politics into the judicial proceedings, Khosrovian moved that Sami be disqualified by the panel of judges. But Sami reiterated that he neither denied nor minimized the enormity of the crime against the Armenians, rejecting the charge that he had injected politics in his speech. After deliberating for fifteen minutes, the judges declared that they were not going to be influenced by political arguments from either side and refused to disqualify Sami. The three Armenian lawyers thereupon walked out in protest and refused to continue to serve as counsel for their surviving clients. The Commission of Inquiry, headed by Mazhar, former governor-general and a career civil servant in Ottoman provincial administration, successfully subpoenaed forty-two official documents from the post-war district governor ofYozgat. Each was authenticated by Interior Ministry officials and marked "It conforms to the original." Many of these cipher telegrams bore the names of two military officers involved in planning the deportations. Both were subpoenaed and in the course of testimony confirmed the authenticity of the documents. One of them was Colonel §ahabeddin, Interim Commander ofKayseris 15th Division, Kayseri being one of the five districts of Ankara province. The other was Colonel Halil Recayi, Deputy Commander of the 5th Army Corps, stationed at Ankara. In addition, the Court obtained a lengthy affi-davit from Major Mehmet Salim, the wartime Military Commandant of Yozgat and President of its Recruitment Office. In it the Turkish major candidly admits the mag-nitude of the crimes against Yozgats Armenians, detailing atrocities and describing the pivotal role of lttihad Party leaders, whom he identifies by name and position.
•   During the 9th sitting alone (February 22, 1919), the prosecutor introduced twelve cipher telegrams which demonstrated that the word "deportation" meant "massacre." This critical piece of evidence was confirmed by Colonel Halil Recayi, who during the course of his testimony at the 7th sitting (February 18) explicitly admitted that he had received from Colonel §ahabeddin cipher telegrams about the killing operations and that "deportation" in fact meant "massacre" (kesim). When con-fronted with deciphered telegrams bearing his name, and warned. Colonel §ahabed-din suffered a fainting (bayginlik) spell and had to be escorted out of the courtroorn. When he resumed his testimony at the next sitting, he declared, "I can confirm that the Armenian population was massacred in and around Bogazliyan" (8th and 9th sit-tings, February 20 and 22). In another cipher telegram, which was introduced at the 2nd sitting (February 8, 1919), and which bore the number 169 and the date of July 14, 1915, the same colonel reports that the Armenians were being subjected to fright-ful acts of looting. Throughout the trials, widespread robbery, plunder, and pillaging of the victim population appeared in stark relief as essential components of genocide (sittings nos. 3,4,7,11, February 10, II, 16 and March 5, 1919, respectively).
The Attorney General emphasized that he was basing his closing arguments on authenticated documents in the possession of the Court, rather than the testimony of Armenian witnesses. He referred to the testimony of the senior Muslim religious official of Bogazliyan, the Mufti, who had exhorted the chief defendant, Kemal, to cease and desist by invoking sacred Muslim law, and of the former governor ofYozgat district, Cemal, who had begged the same Kemal not to reduce the common people to accomplices by enlisting them in criminal acts. The testimony of Colonels §ahabed-din and Recayi, and others, the Attorney General concluded, confirmed the organized nature of the Yozgat mass murder.
•   The first documentary evidence of the dishonesty of defense claims that their acts were motivated by Armenian threats to Turkish security came from Colonel §a-habeddin, who in his cipher telegram of July 14, 1915, addressed to Colonel Recayi in Ankara, stated that "there was no evidence whatsoever" about any uprising being planned (hic bir delail olmadigi) (2nd sitting, February 8, 1919). An equally authorita-tive detail came from Yozgats former district governor (mutassarrif) who was in office at the time the alleged uprising took place. In his testimony Cemal emphatically stated that this accusation was false, that he personally had investigated the matter, and that "The description 'rebellion' is somewhat exaggerated (Isyan sozii biraz sumulludur) [for] the brigandage of ten people cannot be regarded as rebellion" (on kisinin §ekaveti isyan addedilmez). He concluded that the entire matter was an insig-nificant clash of a few Armenians with gendarmes pursuing them, "wretched fugitives desperately trying to stay alive" (11th sitting, March 5, 1919).
As a result of this refutation, Yozgats gendarmery battalion commander Major Tevfik, the second defendant, felt constrained to amend his testimony about a sup-posed Armenian "insurgency." He conceded that his use of the word meant acts of resistance by fugitives trying to escape military service or deportation (15th sitting, March 27, 1919). In written testimony sent on I December, 1918, to the Interior Ministry in Istanbul, Rifaat Bey, a Muslim notable from Yozgat, described in great detail the merciless bloodbaths Major Tevfik organized in and around Yozgat and the vast riches he acquired as a result. Rifaat portrays him as a bloodthirsty man who bragged about his role as executioner of Damad Salih Pa§a, whom the lttihadists had hanged in 1913 on charges of complicity in the assassination of Grand Vizier Mahmut (^evket Pa§a in Istanbul;  in line with his duties as an executioner (cellat). Major Tevfik avowedly pulled the chair from under the feet of the condemned, who was a member of the Ottoman royal family.
•   According to Rifaat, Major Tevfik almost completely annihilated the Armenian population of Yozgat. He first slaughtered males between the ages of 15 and 75 at Ta§ Punar village with "hatchets and axes as the victims kept screaming like birds" (balta ile kus gibi bagirtarak katl ve imha). "Thereafter, he carted off in wagons the belong-ings and jewelry of the victims to his home." Unable to endure the heartrending screams of the victims, a delegation of the Muslim population from the neighboring villages appealed to the major to have mercy on the women and children-in the name of the seriat, the Muslim Sacred Law-with cries of "kill us off in their stead," as they knelt at the feet of his horse. But the commander was inexorable. He pulled his gun and began shooting the supplicants. Major Tevfik then had the Armenian inhabitants of several villages of Akdag Maden and Bogazliyan, as well Kum Kuyu village burned alive in their homes. Rifaat ended his written testimony by denouncing Tevfik as "a wild beast" (canavar) and "bloodthirsty" (hunhar), and pleaded "for the sake of God" that the court "take the requisite steps.
The atrocities adduced during the proceedings against district Governor Kemal exceeded in heinousness those recounted in all other testimony. His zest for massa-cring Armenians, especially women and children, was unexcelled. On his way to the village Giiller (Keller), the most notorious of the killing fields, for example, Kemal is reported to have remarked to his wife that he and his henchmen "were going to the theater," and he was observed smoldng a water-pipe amidst the moans, groans and shrieks of the people in mortal agony (muztarib halkin enin ve iztirabati karsisinda mumaileyhin nargile ictigini) (3rd sitting, February 10, 1919). In the next sitting of the Tribunal Kemal was described as angry at the ineptness of the Turkish villagers rounded up to help his 500 mounted brigands massacre a convoy of several thousand deportees. Shouting furiously at them, "You don't seem to know how to slaughter," (Siz kesmesini bilmiyorsunuz), he reportedly demonstrated a more efficient way of dispatching the victims; the throats were to be slashed diagonally instead of horizon-tally (4th sitting, February II, 1919). In the course of still another sitting, he was described as brandishing his sword and at the same time inciting his henchmen with the words, "Get going, get going. Haven't our mothers home us for this day?" (Anamiz bizi bugiin icin dogurmadi ml?) (5th sitting, February 12, 1919).
•   Abdullahzade Mehmet, Bogazhyan Mufti (the provincial Muslim jurisconsult) advised the Court in written testimony that Kemals method of destroying the Arme-nians consisted of liquidating the males first and subsequently massacring the convoys of women and children. During an encounter in the Bogazliyan Recruitment Bureau Mehmet had warned Kemal of "the wrath of God," to which Kemal retorted that the Mufti seemed to want to be more kindhearted than the government. The Mufti added that Kemal perpetrated his crimes with the help of gendarmes and brigands, the large part of the population being opposed to the crimes. Kemal denied the account, and when the presiding judge retorted, "Why should an old Mufti lie?" Kemals bland answer was, "I don't know." (Sitting 7, February 18; sitting 13, March 24, 1919).
An extensive January 15, 1919, affidavit prepared at the request of the Mazhar Inquiry Commission Major Mehmet Salim, the Military Commandant of Yozgat and President of the latters Recruitment Bureau referred to above, provides every conceivable detail on the conception, organization, control, and execution of the Arme-nian genocide in the district of Yozgat. Salim forthrightly stressed the point that un-derlying the entire scheme of deportations lay "a policy of extermination" (imha siyaseti) which Kemal mercilessly implemented in his district. The details were plot-ted out "in nightly merry-making, drinking parties." Together with his drinking pals Kemal would work out these details for "the next days operations." The atrocities were intended to help redeem "lttihad's national aspirations" and became its "official policy." According to the same affidavit, the massacre of the male victims followed a uniform pattern. In order to render them defenseless they were marched off in twos or fours "with arms and hands tied up." The implements used were "axes, spades, swords, knives, hatchets." As to the secret character of the designs on the Ottoman Armenians, defendant Kemal himself unwittingly supplied proof. In the course of his December 16, 1918, second pretrial interrogation, Kemal volunteered the information that the central authorities in Istanbul had ordered him to "burn" certain ciphers after reading them (okuduktan sonra yakilmast emir olundugundan). Yet, twice during the trials he flatly recanted this statement (3rd and 13th sittings, February 10 and March 24, 1919, respectively). Cemal, the former governor, described to the Court how lttihads Re-sponsible Secretary in Ankara (a position akin to Gauleiters of the Third Reich), Hu-seyin Necati, had ordered him to interpret "deportation" as a code word for "mas-sacre." But Cemal wanted to see the wording of the respective order of the Central Committee of lttihad, Necati refused to give him the piece of paper from which he had read it out (sitting II, March 5, 1919).
•   Defendant Mehmet Kemal reportedly had close family ties to certain people in Van. One source maintains that he was Governor-General Cevdets brother-in-law. In any event, he is quoted by some people as having sworn to avenge the loss of his relatives in the April-May 1915 conflagration of Van, which ended with the defeat of Cevdet and his forces by contingents of the Russian Caucasian Army. Cevdet failed to subdue the small Armenian fighting force which rose to avert the massacre of the rest of the Armenian population of Van province. The final Turkish defeat was at-tended by heavy losses in men and equipment.
There is no doubt that Kemal was affected by this and possibly by family losses in Van. This is reflected in Attorney General Samis opening remarks, specifically mentioning "the Van uprising" and the consequent rise of hostile feelings against the Armenians. Kemal was subsequently quoted as saying to his cronies that through the massacres that he was carrying out against the Armenians, he was avenging his father-in-law (15th sitting, March 27, 1915). This was confirmed by a sergeant of the gendar-mery ofYozgat, a veteran of the killing operations executed on the Yozgat-Bogazliyan trek, who explained Kemals ferocity by a reference to losses his family reportedly sustained in the Van province in April or May 1915. Sergeant §iikru quoted the con-victed governor as follows: "I swore by the Prophet Mohammed, I will not leave any Armenian alive in the district ofYozgat." This rage was so elemental, added the ser-geant, that he behaved especially savagely against women and children during whose destruction he didn't even try to maintain secrecy.  According to his biographer-of course on the other hand-district Governor Kemal had for a period taught a college course on civilization!
Consistent with Ottoman legal tradition, Kemal was afforded the chance to de-liver a speech before the Verdict. His lawyers had already reargued his innocence, blaming in the process the Armenians for everything. His speech was drafted for him by Halil Mente§e, one of the chief lttihadists, under arrest on similar charges and being held in the same Bekiraga prison as Kemal. During the war Halil had occu-pied the posts of Foreign and Justice Minister and for a long time President of the Ottoman Chamber of Deputies, in which capacity he had unsuccessfully tried to block the parliamentary investigation of the massacres. In the speech Kemal called attention to the losses and suffering of the Muslims fleeing the onslaught of "Armenian guerillas fighting in the Russian army and committing barbaric massacres." He claimed to have strengthened the Ottoman State by "obeying the orders" of the gov-ernment. "Whatever atrocities were committed against the Armenians," he said, "were counteractive blows by Muslims who were provoked by the Armenians." He closed his speech with an appeal to "Islamic conscience" (18th sitting, April 7, 1919).
•   The Verdict, death by hanging, was rendered the next day and carried out on April 10. The Court had rejected the Attorney Generals proposal to rely on Article 56 of the Ottoman Penal Code, which assumed a land of civil war involving mutual hostilities and excesses, instead, it relied on Article 45, which clearly distinguished victims from perpetrators. The defendants were found guilty for inciting not only the local Muslims, but Muslims in general. Moreover, the Tribunal exonerated the vast majority of the Armenian population of Yozgat, which had "proven its dedication and loyalty to the Ottoman State." In any event, the Tribunal maintained that even if it were true that Van Armenians were guilty of provocation, Yozgat Armenians could not be held responsible for them: "such transfer of guilt is illegal."
Perhaps the most important feature of the Verdict was its conclusion that the deportations were a cloak for the intended massacres. "There can be no doubt and no hesitation" on this point, it declared in that conclusion (guphe ve tereddiit btrak-madigindan . . .).  Gendarmery commander Tevfik, the other defendant, was sentenced to fifteen years of hard labor as an accessory to the crime. Were these crimes investigated and punished during the war as claimed by past and present Turkish authorities and authors? The answer to this question came dur-ing the questioning of Aziz Nedim in one of the court sittings. Nedim had been a Civil Inspector in the Ottoman provincial administration and a friend of Talat from the days of Salonild. In May 1916 Talat had sent him to Bogazliyan, ostensibly to investigate abuses and crimes committed during the deportations. But in his pre-trial deposition Nedim had declared that according to the order issued to him (emri sami), he "was not authorized to investigate massacres." Attorney General Sami underscored this point when Nedim personally appeared in court under subpoena. (Sitting II, March 5, 1919).  Sami pointed out that "when inspectors came, they limited their investigations to wide-ranging abuses involving plunder and fraud." The officials in-volved were mildly punished not for expropriating the victims, but rather for appro-priating their possessions instead of transferring them to the Treasury. This was pre-cisely why Governor Kemal was originally taken to court not for the massacres he organized, but for "irregularities" in handling the goods and possessions of the Arme-nians. He was convicted, dismissed from his new post at Izmit, only to be reinstated a year later under dubious circumstances.