Russians take Mamahatun

On 16 March 1916 Russian troops entered Mamahatun, a small town on the Kara Su, that is the western Euphrates, roughly halfway along the road from Erzurum to Erzincan. Today the place is called Tercan. This date is given by W. E. D. Allen and Paul Muratoff’s history of the Caucasian wars, while the Turkish official history, cited by modern Turkish historians, speaks of 15 March. The British chronologies of the war, both the one published by the Committee of Imperial Defence and the one by the Ministry of Information, record the capture of Mamahatun only under 24 May 1916. That date is wrong: by the end of May the town had been in Russian hands for more than two months.

After the fall of Erzurum on 16 February the shattered Ottoman Third Army retreated westwards, pursued by Cossacks from 17 to 19 February. The Turkish IX and XI Corps went across the plain along the Kara Su towards Aşkale, and X Corps along snow-covered paths to the north-west, towards Bayburt. On 20 February, before Aşkale, the Cossacks came up against a Turkish rearguard in a strong position at Abdalcık. Only after two days of heavy fighting did the infantry regiments brought up, the Elisavetpol and the Baku, take this position and Aşkale itself. The headquarters of the Third Army moved to Erzincan, and the Turkish rearguard took up position again on both sides of the road to Bayburt.

The commander of the Russian Caucasus Army, General Nikolai Yudenich, looked for a way round. Reconnaissance reported that the ground towards Mamahatun was weakly held, so he formed a special outflanking detachment, made up mainly of the 154th Derbent Regiment. It was to go up the valley of the Tuzla Çay river, skirt the Dumanlı Dağ from the south and strike at Mamahatun. The march in the mountains at the end of winter took a long time. Only on 13 March did the detachment reach Kumsor in the Tuzla valley, and on 15 March it ran into a Turkish detachment in position near the village of Parsinik. The Turks were thrown back, and the next day the Russians entered Mamahatun. According to Allen and Muratoff they took 800 prisoners and five guns there. On 17 March they seized the bridge over the Kara Su at Kotur.

The whole bend of the river west of Mamahatun passed into Russian hands. Allen and Muratoff regard this success as the logical conclusion of the Erzurum offensive, which had begun in January with the Battle of Köprüköy. Mamahatun lay on the main road into the interior of Anatolia and became a forward salient of the Russian front, from which Yudenich intended in future to strike at Erzincan. The matter of Bayburt, however, remained unfinished; there the Turks defended themselves stubbornly and successfully. Enver Pasha, who after the fall of Erzurum had dismissed the commander of the Third Army, Mahmud Kâmil Pasha, entrusted it to Vehip Pasha, who had distinguished himself in the defence of the Dardanelles.

The Russians held Mamahatun through the spring. At the end of May, when they sent the division defending it to rest, Vehip Pasha unexpectedly attacked the weakly held salient and recaptured the town. The Russians retook it only in July, during the offensive that brought them to Erzincan.