Ottomans occupy Kars

On 25 April 1918 Ottoman troops occupied Kars, the strongest fortress in Transcaucasia. They did not have to storm it. The Armenian garrison, which could have held out for many weeks, withdrew on the orders of its own government, leaving the Turks the forts, the guns and huge depots. This date is given unanimously by the British historians of the Caucasian wars W.E.D. Allen and Paul Muratoff, by Armenian studies and by Turkish tradition. Allen and Muratoff write that the first Turkish units entered the town at nine in the morning; other sources speak of the evening. Over the following days the retreating Armenian troops handed the rest of the district over to the Turks. A British chronology of the war gives the date as 27 April.

A fortress without defenders

The Russians had taken Kars by storm in November 1877, in the war with Turkey. The troops that captured it were commanded by an Armenian, General Mikhail Loris-Melikov. For forty years Russia expanded the fortress, and during the war it accumulated great stores there for the Caucasus Army. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk of 3 March 1918 obliged Russia to withdraw from the Kars district, but the Transcaucasian authorities did not recognise the treaty, and Kars was held by Armenian troops. The Turks therefore set out to take what was theirs by force. After taking Sarikamish in the first days of April, the I Caucasian Corps came up to the line the Armenians had organised on the plain near Novo-Selim station. On 19 April the Turks broke through it in several places and the Armenians fell back towards the fortress. According to Allen and Muratoff, their losses did not exceed 350 men.

The Armenian commanders wanted to fight. On 19 April the commander-in-chief of the Transcaucasian forces, General Yevgeny Lebedinsky, visited the front together with the commander of the Armenian corps, General Tovmas Nazarbekian, and the head of the French military mission, Colonel Chardigny. At a meeting of Armenian political and military leaders in Alexandropol (today Gyumri), the majority came out in favour of defence. According to some sources the Kars garrison numbered about 10,000 men and had more than 200 guns. In Tiflis, however, other considerations prevailed. On 22 April the Transcaucasian Seim declared independence and accepted the Brest terms, and the prime minister-designate, Akaki Chkhenkeli, came to an understanding with the commander of the Ottoman Third Army, Vehip Pasha. According to Armenian sources, without the knowledge of the Armenian politicians he was inviting into his cabinet, he ordered Kars to be surrendered without a fight.

The ceasefire order

On the morning of 23 April the Armenians took up positions a few kilometres in front of the forts. When skirmishes began with the approaching Turkish columns, Nazarbekian received three telegrams. Chkhenkeli informed him of the founding of the independent republic, and the new Minister of War, the Georgian General Ilia Odishelidze, ordered him to cease fire in agreement with the Turkish command. Chaos broke out in the Armenian lines. The Turks replied to a parlementaire that they had no orders, and pressed on with their advance. On 24 April Vehip Pasha’s headquarters agreed to a truce on condition that the Armenians fell back behind the line of forts, while Turkish units began to outflank Kars towards Mezrea station, threatening the road to Alexandropol. Colonel Morel twice went to talk to the commander of the Turkish vanguard. In the end Vehip demanded that on the morning of 25 April the Armenians hand over the forts on the left bank of the Kars river, in the afternoon those on the right bank, and within three days withdraw behind the Arpaçay (Akhurian), the old frontier of 1877. Nazarbekian had no choice.

According to Russian sources, the first Turkish units in the town were from the 11th Division. According to Armenian studies, the next day representatives of the authorities formally handed the town over to the commander of the I Caucasian Corps, Kâzım Karabekir. Thousands of inhabitants left together with the troops, according to some sources as many as about 20,000. On the evening of 26 April the retreating Armenian troops were near Başgedikler, and on 28 April they crossed the Arpaçay. All the fortress’s guns and all the war material stored in it fell into Turkish hands.

The fall of Kars shook the Armenians. Refugees and broken units brought hunger and disease to the Erivan province, and the Dashnaks at first refused to join Chkhenkeli’s government. The Turks did not stop at the 1877 frontier. At the Batum conference, which opened on 11 May, they also demanded Alexandropol and the railway running through Armenia to Persia, and a few days later they advanced further.