Whether the Armenian assertions can be sustained or not, the fact remains that on March 12, 1918, the victorious 36th Division entered Erzurum, became master of the stockpiles, of the four hundred large fortress guns, and, more important, of the key to the entire Armenian Plateau. With the fall of Erzurum, the battle for Western Armenia ended. In Van and northward at Khnus ad in the Alashkert Valley, Armenian units resisted a little longer before the battle for Caucasian Armenia began. In mid-March, Andranik, disgusted and dejected, resigned his command and left for Tiflis. 30 General Lebedinsky attempted to stabilise a shorter defence perimeter by entrusting to Nazarbekian the front from Maku in North Persia to Olti in the Kars oblast, and to general Gabaev's Georgian units the region between Olti and Batum. Meanwhile, the Caucasus Army General Staff withdrew from Sarighamish to Alexandropol, the strategic juncture of the railway running from Kars to Tiflis and to the Persian border at Joulfa. 31
Opposing the Transcaucasian forces were one Turkish division along the Black Sea coast between Trabizond and Batum and three others on the central plateau facing the Armenian positions at Sarighamish-Mejinkert and at Van. Spurred on by their near effortless victories, the shabby Ottoman units continued to advance, crossing the 1914 boundary in the last week of March. 32 In a move from the Erzurum vilayet into areas west and south of Sarighamish, they successfully severed communications between Van and Kars. The Caucasus Army Command, fearing a flanking movement reminiscent of Enver's 1914 strategy, recalled its feeble contingents from the Alashkert Valley and on April 5 ordered general Areshian to abandon Sarighamish and to withdraw to Novo-Selim, approximately 32 kilometres from the Kars fortress. Two days later units of the Turkish IV Corps entered Van, as the defenders and refugees for the third time since the outbreak of war fled over the narrow strip of Persian territory that separated the vilayet from the Yerevan guberniia. 33 Within two months the eastern provinces of the Ottoman Empire had been retrieved. Enver, Vehib, Karabekir, and Shevki now prepared to effectuate Article IV of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.
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