Decisive Battles near Yerevan
By the middle of May, 1918, there appeared to be no deliverance for the thousands of natives refugees in the Yerevan guberniia. They were isolated and surrounded by enemy forces. Five or six thousand shabby troops, who had retreated steadily during the preceding four months, were all that stood in the way of obliteration. W. E. D. Allen, a scholar in studies of the Caucasus, has captured the mood: "The prospect of the ultimate victory of the western powers must have seemed at least uncertain to observers in Yerevan in May 1918, and it has in fact rarely fallen to the lot of a people to confront such a desperate and seemingly hopeless situation as that which threatened the Armenians in the early summer of 1918." 27 Four Turkish divisions of the I and II Caucasian corps fanned out from Alexandropol in the direction of Gharakilisa to the east, Bash Aparan to the southeast, and Sardarabad to the south.
To the astonishment of friend and foe alike, the unexpected came to pass. The Armenians stopped running, for there was nowhere to flee. The routes to Tiflis and Persia were sealed, the enemy advanced from north and west, and armed Tatar-Kurdish bands roamed the southern and eastern sectors of the province. As the ordeal of battle entered its final phase, the temper of defenders and populace alike transformed. Resolution supplanted panic. Sustaining the exclamation made by Haroutounian several weeks earlier in the Seim, the Armenians were now ready "to die with weapons in hand." On the three fronts, the peasants and soldiers fought furiously. On May 24, General Nazarbekian ordered a counterattack from Gharakilisa against Javid Bey's 11th Caucasian Division. 28 In the frenzied warfare of the next four days, thousands from both sides were killed or wounded. Then Shevki Pasha, commanding the Turkish forces on the Armenian theatre, threw the 9th Division into action. In hand-to-hand combat, the Turkish regiment slowly drove Nazarbekian's men out of Gharakilisa to positions just outside Dilijan. On this line the Armenians stood firm. The two Ottoman divisions avenged their heavy losses by slaying several thousand villagers who remained within the newly occupied regions. 29
Meanwhile, to the south along the two routes leading to Yerevan, there were equally rigorous encounters. General Silikian's Sardarabad group commanded by Colonel Daniel Bek Pirumian and the Bash Aparan group headed by Dro stood only three hours' march from Yerevan. The Armenian soldiers were heavily outnumbered but were assisted by hundreds of civilians. Carts drawn by oxen, water buffalo, and cows jammed the roads bringing food, provisions, ammunition, and volunteers from the vicinity of Yerevan. Regiments of the Turkish 5th and 11th Caucasian and of the 12th Infantry divisions struck on May 21-22, but the defenders did not retreat. Savage fighting continued until May 24, when the Ottoman troops fled for the first time since the hostilities had begun near Erzinjan. Inspired, the Armenians drove northward from Bash Aparan toward Hamamlu and from Sardarabad toward Alexandropol. 30 On the evening of May 24, Silikian made an impassioned appeal to his people. He called upon the soldiers to rescue the honour of the maidens and exhorted the women to recall the heroic determination and sacrifices of their fifth-century sisters who, assisting General Vartan Mamikonian, had defended the religion and integrity of the nation. In terms apropos of the emotions of the moment, Silikian concluded: "In the name of the physical existence of this eternally tortured people, In the name of violated justice, Arise! On to the Holy War!" 31
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