Massacres in Mamuret-ul-Aziz Vilayet

Massacres in the Mamuret-ul-Aziz Vilayet or Harput District were a large scale of massacres that happened in the vilayet.
Attack by Kurds in 1895
The first sign of danger was the appearance of Kurds supporting the Ottomans from the regions north and east. Villages were attacked, looted and burned, and villagers were killed or scattered. For a time, the marauders seemed to hold aloof from the city itself, but as they kept on their course of pillage their appetite for plunder was whetted, and they looked with avaricious eyes at the city on the hill.
In the words of an eye-witness;
Deportation in 1915
In May 1915, prior to the start of the deportations, Ottoman authorities in Harput began to mount systematic searches for arms in Armenian shops and homes in the twin cities and the surrounding villages.
Denmark's minister to the Ottoman Empire during the First World War stated, "The Turks are vigorously carrying through their cruel intention, to exterminate the Armenian people", Carl Wandel wrote on 3 July 1915.
The Bishop of Harput was ordered to leave Aleppo within 48 hours "....and it has later been learned that this Bishop and all the clergy that accompanied him have been ... killed between Diyarbekir and Urfa at a place where approximately 1,700 Armenian families have suffered the same fate ... In Angora ... approximately 6,000 men ... have been shot on the road ... even here in Constantinople (Istanbul), Armenians are being abducted and sent to Asia ...".
 
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