Erzurum in the First World War

Erzurum, a fortress city on the Armenian Highlands, was the most important point of the Caucasus front on the Ottoman side. It housed the headquarters of the Third Army, and from here a road led through the upper Aras valley to Russian Kars. In the winter of 1914 the army of Enver Pasha set out from here for Sarıkamış; in 1915 the Armenian inhabitants of the city and the plain were deported and murdered; and in February 1916 the Russians took the fortress. The Turks returned to it in March 1918.

Fortress and headquarters (1914–1915)

Erzurum had been rebuilt after the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878, and two rings of forts on the Deveboynu ridge shielded it from the east. In February 1914 the city was chosen as the seat of one of the two inspectorates that were to carry out reforms in the eastern provinces under European supervision. In the summer the congress of the Armenian Dashnaktsutyun party met here. A Young Turk delegation urged the Armenians to raise a rising in the Russian Caucasus in the event of war, but received an evasive answer.

When Russia declared war on Turkey, its corps advanced towards Erzurum, but a counter-attack by the Third Army pushed it back almost to the border. Emboldened, Enver came to Erzurum to lead a winter offensive in person. At Sarıkamış frost, typhus and a Russian counter-attack destroyed his army. Typhus then raged in Erzurum’s overcrowded hospitals, and on 12 February 1915 it killed the new commander of the Third Army, Hafız Hakkı.

The destruction of the Armenians (1915)

The Entente declaration of May 1915 named Erzurum among the places where Armenians had been massacred in mid-April. According to the historian Richard Hovannisian, the genocide reached the city and plain of Erzurum in May 1915. The villages were massacred, and the columns deported from the city were driven towards the Syrian desert and murdered on the way. The American missionary Robert Stapleton, who stayed in the city with his family, later told the British correspondent Morgan Philips Price how he had pleaded with the governor for the condemned. When the Russians came, the Armenian quarters and villages stood empty and plundered.

Under Russian rule (1916–1917)

In January 1916 General Nikolai Yudenich struck in the middle of winter. In the Erzurum offensive he broke the Third Army at Köprüköy and then forced his way over snowbound ridges into the ring of forts. On 16 February 1916 Cossacks rode into the abandoned city. The Russians captured 327 guns here. Price, who inspected them a few days later, found among them guns dated 1873, made in England.

The fall of a fortress regarded as the key to Anatolia echoed across the Entente. The Tsar told the French ambassador that he needed Erzurum and Trebizond for strategic reasons, and in the Sykes–Picot agreement and Grey’s note the allies granted Russia the whole province. The tsarist authorities, however, did not allow the Armenian refugees to return. Only the Provisional Government allowed it, after the revolution of 1917, and the Armenian Yakov Zavriev took charge of civil affairs under the Russian general who governed the occupied lands from Erzurum. By the end of the summer Russian soldiers were deserting en masse, and in December 1917 an armistice was concluded with the Turks.

The Turks return (1918)

A newly formed Armenian corps took over the front. In February the Third Army of Vehip Pasha took Erzincan and Trebizond. On 3 March Andranik Ozanian arrived in Erzurum with reinforcements, on the very day on which Russia gave up these lands at Brest-Litovsk. On the night of 11–12 March the Armenians abandoned the city, and in the morning the Turks entered it. Kâzım Karabekir found about 400 guns and large stocks in the fortress. The retreat was accompanied by violence against civilians on both sides, and thousands of Armenian inhabitants fled with the troops.

Erzurum became the gateway of the Turkish march into Transcaucasia. At the end of March Ottoman troops set out from here towards the old border and on to Kars. The Mudros armistice did not order the Turks out of the eastern provinces, and according to Hovannisian up to 20,000 soldiers and irregulars remained under arms around Erzurum. The Armenians hoped that the peace conference would give them these lands. On 23 July 1919 a congress of delegates from the eastern provinces met in Erzurum, elected Mustafa Kemal its chairman and rejected all plans to partition these lands.