Turks retake Van

At the beginning of April 1918 units of the Ottoman IV Corps entered Van, the capital of the vilayet on the eastern shore of Lake Van. The town, the scene in 1915 of the Armenian defence, had been in the hands of the Russians and Armenians for almost three years. Now there was no one to defend it. The dates given by sources differ by a few days. The British chronology of the war and some Western studies give 5 April, others 6 April, and Turkish tradition celebrates the anniversary of the recovery of Van on 2 April. According to that tradition the town was entered by the troops of Ali İhsan Pasha, later General Ali İhsan Sâbis.

Van had long been a symbol of this war. In spring 1915 its Armenian inhabitants defended themselves here against the troops of the governor Cevdet Bey; in May the Russians marched in, and in August, after the defeat at Malazgirt, they withdrew, taking tens of thousands of refugees with them. That same summer the Russians and Armenian volunteers returned to the town and held it until the end of 1917. After the revolution the Russian Caucasus Army disintegrated, and the defence of the occupied Turkish lands was taken over by a newly formed Armenian corps. According to the British historians W.E.D. Allen and Paul Muratoff, in February 1918 Van was guarded by the 5th Rifle Regiment and two battalions of volunteers from Van. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk of 3 March obliged Russia to evacuate the provinces of eastern Anatolia, but for the Armenians who had survived the genocide or had returned behind the Russian army, the return of the Turks meant mortal danger.

When at the end of March Vehip Pasha’s Third Army moved towards the old Russo-Turkish border, IV Corps advanced on its right wing. Its 12th Infantry Division was approaching Malazgirt, and the 5th Division was preparing to take Van. The Armenians of Van, Malazgirt and the surrounding area, like the inhabitants of the Erzurum and Hınıs areas before them, did not wait for the Ottoman troops to arrive and asked to be evacuated. The garrison covered their departure and then left the town itself. According to Allen and Muratoff, by about 10 April two regiments of Van volunteers and the 5th Rifle Regiment were already marching towards Iğdır to join the Armenian group defending Erivan. Some of the refugees, according to some studies, escaped east into Persia.

In Turkish memory April 1918 is the liberation of the town after years of occupation, during which the Muslim population had also suffered, killed and driven out during the fighting of 1915–1917. The Ottoman troops found Van in ruins. The old town at the foot of the citadel, destroyed during the siege of 1915 and the later fighting, was never rebuilt, and the new Van later grew up a few kilometres away, at the foot of Mount Erek.

For the Armenians the departure from Van closed centuries of their presence by the lake. The capture of the town, on the other hand, opened the road to Persia for the Turks. According to Allen and Muratoff, by mid-May the 5th Division was already marching from Van towards Başkale and the Persian border.