Sayfo; City of Bitlis

Bitlis and Surrounding Areas massacres

The city of Bitlis (historically known by its Syriac name Bidlis) is situated about 15 kilometers from the shores of Lake Van in southeastern Anatolia. It served as a strategic hub guarding the trade routes between different parts of the Ottoman Empire, featuring a formidable fortress. Historically, the city was ruled by a group of semi-autonomous Kurdish princes. During the early sixteenth century, a Kurdish prince occupied the castle, acknowledging only nominal allegiance to the Persian Shah. By the mid-seventeenth century under Ottoman rule, the traveler Tavernier documented the substantial power of the Bey of Bitlis, who maintained a force of twenty thousand to twenty-five thousand horsemen and controlled a castle defended by three successive drawbridges. While major massacres are not detailed in the city proper during this era, the period established the local power structures and the militarized environment that would facilitate later atrocities. The dynasty of Bitlis remained one of the five primary principalities dividing the region. In 1813, John McDonald Kinneir visited the region, documenting the continued dominance of Kurdish tribal elites. The end of this period saw the beginning of centralizing Ottoman reforms that disrupted the traditional equilibrium between the Kurdish rulers and their Christian subjects.

During the Bedir Khan massacres of 1842 to 1846, the city felt the impact of the regional conflict between the Ottoman government and the ambitious Kurdish emir of Bohtan. Although the most concentrated massacres took place in the Hakkari and Tiyari districts, the Bitlis region was significantly destabilized by the invasion. Bedir Khan sought to expand his state to the gates of Bitlis and Diyarbekir, and his operations were noted for their religious motivation and targeting of Christian elements. In 1849, the last of the old order of princes in Bitlis, Sherif Bey, was finally overwhelmed by Ottoman forces under Reshid Pasha and taken prisoner to Constantinople. Decades later, in 1891, Hassan Tahsin Pasha was appointed Governor-General (Vali) of Bitlis and began using his office for pecuniary extraction, threatening wealthy Christians with imprisonment for sedition unless they paid substantial bribes.

In October 1895, the Hamidian massacres started in the Bitlis vilayet when massacres of Christians, including Syriac Orthodox, occurred across the province. The massacre in the city of Bitlis on October 25, 1895, was specifically noted as the first of its kind. The violence began following a Friday rally at the mosque, where the blare of a bugle summoned the faithful to attack the Armenian and Syriac inhabitants. Approximately 900 Armenians and Syriacs were killed in the city, while the Turks reported only 39 Muslim fatalities. Perpetrators included local Muslim mobs and Ottoman troops, who looted the market and killed men and women who refused to convert to Islam. Many Christians sought safety on the mission premises of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. In the aftermath, the local administration attempted to force Christian leaders to sign documents exonerating the government and blaming the victims.

During this period of the Hamidian massacres, which are part of a long continuum of extreme violence that began in the 1890s, numberless villages in the districts of Sassoun, Dalvorik, Moush, Siirt, Yerum, Chirvan, Guzel Dere, Seghjerd, Cindj, and Djabagh—inhabited not only by Armenians, but also by Syriacs and Chaldeans—were plundered by armed bands of Muslim fanatics. The inhabitants of these villages were wiped out on the orders of the Turkish Government. In many other areas, the Syriac Orthodox formed the great majority of victims. Ottoman authorities are noted to have incited unruly mobs and Kurdish regiments to carry out the massacres, and these forces may have been unable or uninterested in differentiating between adherents of different churches.

In early 1915, the Ottoman authorities issued a decree for the disarmament of Christians. On April 20, 1915, Vali Mustafa Abdulhalik Renda ordered the arrest of the cream of the youth of Bitlis, who were marched through the streets in shackles and hanged outside the city, their bodies left to be devoured by dogs. In June 1915, the Butcher Battalion (Kassab Tabouri) under Djevdet Bey arrived and conducted a general massacre. About 12,000 refugees had initially gathered in the city, but they were systematically eliminated. Men were marched off and killed in groups, while women were subjected to sexual violence and children were drowned in the river or thrown into pits. Notable clergy targets included Khachig Vartanian, the Protestant pastor, and the Syriac Orthodox bishop.

During the Sayfo or Syriac Genocide from 1915 to 1924, Bitlis and its surrounding areas witnessed the total annihilation of many Christian communities, indicating that most victims were killed during massacres. The Ottoman provinces of Van and Bitlis saw Syriacs become victims of military and civilian revenge killings. In these provinces, Syriacs were described as independent political and military players to a certain degree, challenging the Ottoman government with a declaration of war and their pro-Russian alliance. During these events, Turkish troops and irregular brigades systematically killed the Christians of Bitlis and Seert starting in June 1915, a campaign that almost completely wiped out about 150,000 Armenians of Bitlis, Moush, and Sassoun.

The Chaldeans who lived in Bitlis, particularly in or around Siirt and Jizre, were subject to great cruelty and had little chance of survival unless they had been able to flee beforehand. Among the victims was Bishop Addai Sher, a known Chaldean scholar. The Syriac archbishop of Syria, Severius Aphrem Barsoum, reported losses for the Syriac Orthodox Church dioceses, including Bitlis with 8,510 dead. By the end of 1915, the Christian population was almost entirely displaced or murdered, with Syriac Orthodox population figures in 1920 showing only 130 families remaining in twelve villages across the entire Bitlis district.