Special Striking Division

Treaty of Batum and the Yerevan Regime

For Andranik, his loyalists, and the Turkish Armenians as a whole, Armenia was not a small strip of land around Yerevan. It encompassed the whole of the Armenian Highlands. Few Armenians lived in and around Yerevan. In 1920, two years after the Republic of Yerevan declared independence, the majority of the city’s population of 30,000 were Tatars, not including non-Tatar muslims. Nonetheless, the dreams of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire did not materialize, and Andranik failed to defend Erzurum^[3]: 411, as a result of the Russians, who had fled the front, and did not consider the loss of Turkish Armenia to be their problem.^[1]: 408 Accepting defeat, Andranik moved to the South Caucasus. The Treaty of Batum was signed on the fourth of June, in 1918, shortly after the declaration of independence by the Republic of Armenia, on the 28th of May. Andranik, having completed his reading of the treaty’s terms, was upset. The terms being:^[1]: 409

“[Russian] Armenia, therefore, without Alexandropol, Kars, Surmalu, Karabagh, Zangezur, and without Nakhichevan.”
“Armenia’s army should not exceed 1,200 soldiers, which should be placed under Turkey’s control.”
“It is forbidden to organize armed units on Armenia’s soil, and Vehib Pasha has specified that Andranik must disband his 1,200 soldiers.”

General Andranik soon sent a telegram to the commander of the Armenian army, which read, “With the terms of this Treaty, you have passed the chains of enslavement around your own necks with your own hands.” He refused to recognize the Republic of Armenia, which could not defend its freedom, borders, citizens, or control its own roads.^[1]: 410 Many Western Armenians also shared this sentiment.^{[3]: 272–273} Despite threats and demands, and Article Four of the treaty, and on specific orders of Vehib Pasha to disband his army, Andranik did not, stating, “Tell Vehib Pasha that I am not going to disband my army”.^[1]: 415

Battle of Khoy

On June 23, 1918, Andranik decided to enter the city. His battle plan went as follows: The 1st Battalion and 400 cavalrymen would hold the road headed to Salmas, which ran west, outward from Khoy; the 2nd Battalion would defend a different position, and the 3rd Battalion be held in reserve. Andranik’s division blew holes in the walls of vineyards surrounding the city. Using them, Andranik and the division entered the city, under enemy fire. The city’s Persian leaders came to Andranik, greeted him, and agreed to submit to him. The Turkish resistance was weak and their artillery was rendered ineffective. Until afternoon, victory seemed to be in Armenian hands.^[1]: 420 However, when afternoon came, Turks received considerable aid from infantrymen and artillerymen from Dizadiz and Sheytan-Avan. Some Armenian units were given the task to defend the overpass near Vardanants Blur, a hill that stretched across the road to Salmas. A Turkish cavalry unit, coming from the northeast of Khoy, tried to move behind the Armenian forces. Andranik sent cavalry units against the Turks, and close combat ensued. At the same time, in the rear of the division, the refugees saw the Turkish attempt to outmaneuver the division and besiege it, and panicked. The refugees, who began leaving without their supplies, worried Andranik, who ordered the division to withdraw to protect the refugees. The Armenians retreated while maintaining pressure.^[1]: 420

Towards evening, the last Armenian soldiers came. The Armenian forces suffered 60-70 casualties, which included the captain of the cavalry, Hago.^[1]: 420 Turkish losses, on the other hand, remained unknown. Backtracking, the division and the refugees walked through the night back to the Araxes bridge. Occupying both sides of the river, the division and refugees rested the next day. Toward the evening, Andranik heard that Turkish cavalry was on its way to the bridge. He ordered the division to cross the bridge into the Russian side, and resist the Turks from there. The cavalry unit turned out to be a small piece of the Van Regiment, who came to join him, having heard that Andranik was advancing to Khoy. Joining him, they would remain until the end.^[1]: 420

Attack on Zangezur

Soon, the Turks began to attack Zangezur.^[4]: 86 A delegation from the town of Goris asked Andranik for aid, because the roads from Sisian to Goris were endangered yet again. Survivors of Aghuti, Vaghuti, and other razed Tatar villages were resorting to banditry. Andranik, suspecting that the attack on Zangezur was a distraction; a trick to make him leave Sisian, the supposed real target. Adhering to his suspicions, before heading to Zangezur, Andranik took precautions to defend Sisian. People were called to arms as Andranik headed to Goris. He and his division left for Zangezur. On the way there, he neutralized the villages of Aghuti and Vaghuti, which held remnants of Tatar hideouts.^[1]: 427

Climbing a mountain under fire, Andranik and his division mounted their cannons there, and destroyed the villages via cannonball fire. Before Andranik could head to Goris, messengers had come to tell him that the Turks heard of his approach, and pulled back about 10 miles. However, a delegation from Shusha told Andranik that the town was occupied by Turks, as of September 25, and that a Turkish-Armenian commission had been made.^[1]: 428 The purpose of it was to enforce a policy to disarm the Armenians and live under Turkish rule. In response, Andranik called a meeting of Goris’ 16 representatives, to see if they were up to resist the Turkish onslaughts. By 27 votes against 21, they voted to resist. This was concerning to Andranik, due to the lack of decisiveness. Andranik headed back to Sisian again, frustrated, and because Goris was a valley town, and it was dangerous for the division to stay there. He arrived in Karakilisa, a village near Sisian. Sisian’s residents decided that armed resistance was the choice.^[1]: 428

After finishing the organization of the defense of Sisian, Andranik received a letter from Goris, which finally decided to fight for the district’s defense. Kafan’s Armenians, hearing of Andranik’s arrival to Goris, also chose the same path. On October 21, 1918, messengers from a village in Karabakh informed Andranik that the city of Shusha was surrendered to the Turks without the turning over of any weapons, and added that no other town or village in Karabakh was under Turkish control.^[1]: 429 After Andranik was done arranging the defenses for Kafan, Sisian, and Zangezur as a whole, he turned his attention to Karabakh, as it would be important to capture, setting a place for his soldiers to strike from, at the Turkish forces in Baku. Andranik continued his advance to Shusha.^[1]: 429 Along the way, the division faced Kurdish resistance at Abdallyar and surrounding villages.^{[4]: 88–89}

Karabakh

Knowing that Baku fell to the Turks around a month earlier, and that 30,000 Armenians in the city were slaughtered, Andranik planned to occupy Karabakh and attack Turkish Baku. However, Armenians from Zangezur informed Andranik that the Allied Powers, now victorious, had occupied Constantinople, that Germany surrendered, and that Turks were rounding up Armenian leaders in preparation to kill them. The news of the victory did not change much for Andranik, however, who was fighting the Turks before, and planned to continue fighting them as normal. On November 9 the division was mourning its late troop commander, Voskan Stepanian, who had died of smallpox.^[1]: 430

Making the final preparations to move on Karabakh, Andranik was approached by the Armenian Women’s Society of Goris. The organization handed him a crimson silk flag with the words “Special Striking Division” embroidered in gold. The division left Goris on November 27, 1918.^[1]: 431 The cavalry was facing the people of the city in the city square, with Andranik in front of them, centered. The clergy and Armenian National Council members arrived, with the clergy blessing the flag, as it was handed to Andranik from a representative of the Women’s Society. Being applauded, Andranik said his goodbyes, and left for Karabakh. In order to get there, Andranik and his division had to cross through the Zabugh-Hekerlu pass, a steep, rocky valley between two mountains.^[1]: 431

There were dangers, including thieves and bandits, who were using some 20 Tatar villages in the area as camps. These Tatars, even during the Tsarist days, could not be repressed. After the Russian Revolution, the Russian troops left the region, leaving it to the Tatars, who intensified their crimes.^[1]: 431 The Tatars in question are the same Turkish-Tatar outlaws who destroyed the village of Karakishlak and massacred 217 Russian-Armenian soldiers, who had returned from the Caucasian Front. The soldiers were under the command of Colonel Bezhanbekov, the man who deserted Andranik during the defense of Erzurum. Furthermore, during the previous summer, when some refugees under Andranik’s care left for Karabakh in search of food, 80 or so were massacred in the Zabugh-Hekerlu pass, and the survivors returned to the Tegh village in Zangezur. The bandits around the pass were joined by Turkish bands; remnants of Nuri Pasha’s army.^[1]: 432

In early 1918, Enver Pasha, Nuri’s older brother, dispatched Nuri and 8,000 soldiers to Azerbaijan. It was then that he was tasked to suppress the strong Armenian presence in the Baku area. 7,000 Azerbaijani fighters joined him, after which the combined soldiers overwhelmed the ill-equipped Baku Commune in September 1918. Andranik was now trying to avenge the massacre of the refugees, and those who deserted him at Erzurum. Before he began his attack on the Merkiz Mountain’s entrenched Tatars, he sent a letter to the Armenians in Shusha, telling them to occupy Aghdam. He also ordered Armenian militias in the Kafan to attack the Tatars from the rear.^[1]: 432 Andranik would command his own troops to attack the most vulnerable positions, which were the Zabugh-Hekerlu pass and Merkiz Mountain. When Andranik and his soldiers headed to the valley, they saw skeletons of Erzurum’s deserters and refugees. At their position, atop the Merkiz Mountain, they began to be fired upon.^[1]: 432 After two days of battles, Andranik’s soldiers had destroyed all the Tatar villages in the area, and neutralized the bandits. The road then lay open for the division to head toward Shusha. One of Andranik’s bodyguards, in his diary, wrote that the division overran 13 villages in the district and 37 in Kafan. After seizing positions on the Merkiz Mountain, he saw that their trenches were built with certain techniques. This led to the conclusion that Turkish soldiers were at the least aiding the Tatars, and likely directly fighting with them.^[1]: 433

It was now December 1918, and Andranik was preparing to march on Shusha, two telegrams came his way. One was from “The British General of Baku,” and the other had a signature that read, “Fatali Khan Khoyski, Prime Minister of Azerbaijan.” One of them instructed him not to march on Shusha because two British officers would see him soon. The second had orders for Shusha’s military and government to make sure the first would reach Andranik. Andranik, questioning the first telegram’s authenticity, the messenger (an old Tatar peasant), replied, expressing his suspicions. While resting, the division was met by a car with a white flag.^[1]: 433

Out came a British man named G.F. Squire, and a French man named Captain Nicolas Gasfield. The two handed Andranik a letter from General William Montgomerie Thomson, the commander of the British forces in Baku. The letter ordered Andranik to abandon his plan to invade Karabakh; it stated that any military action would damage the chance of a peaceful solution in the upcoming Paris Peace Conference. However, Thomson did this because (1) He wanted to annex Karabakh to Azerbaijan and (2) A pro-British Azerbaijan would be important in countering Russia and supplying Britain with oil. Andranik’s division was now a danger, seeing as they dominated the Zangezur situation. Hovannisian writes that if Thomson hadn’t intervened, “Armenia would have established control over Karabagh as well.”^[1]: 434 Andranik was dissatisfied with Thomson's letter. Andranik knew that he couldn't fight the Turco-Tatar forces along with the British, thus he sent a message back to Thomson, asking what he needed to do. Thomson sent a message back, telling Andranik to go back and wait in Zangezur. Soon after, Andranik headed back and Thomson successfully prevented Andranik’s occupation of the territory.^{[1]: 434 [4]: 90}

Departure from Zangezur

After the strategic misstep that was believing in Thomson, Andranik was left with little choice. There were 30,000 refugees under his care at this point, and Major William Duff Gibbon, a Baku British Military Mission officer, upon order in December 1918, went to Zangezur to have a meeting with Andranik. The meeting had two purposes: (1) To see what would be done about the refugees and (2) To discuss Tatar complaints that Andranik attacked their villages.^[1]: 435 After the meeting, 400 refugees were given to Gibbon, who escorted them to Shusha, where they were living, prior to being displaced. The rest of the refugees would be sent back to Nakhichevan. The khans of the region declined, but after Gibbon made an agreement, they complied.^[1]: 437

By March 1919, the number of refugees under Andranik’s care dwindled to 23,000, and only 1,350 soldiers remained. The relief officials of Yerevan could not feed that many refugees^[4]: 189, as people in the city were already dying in the masses because of famine. It was agreed upon that the British lieutenant Hovel would remain in Sisian and care for the refugees until American relief arrived.^[1]: 438 For the last time, Andranik left Zangezur on March 25, 1919. Throughout April 4, four pack-horses and two camels were lost by the infantry and cavalry units. Andranik was extremely distraught, and said:^[1]: 440

Go and tell your government that, beginning today, I will have nothing to do with the Allies. Whatever money I have received from them I will return after I sell my horses in Yerevan. You told us not to fight, to wait for the Peace Conference. We trusted you and waited patiently for our liberation. Now you tell us that we are going to have an Armenia independent of Turkey. Very soon there will be no one left to inhabit that Armenia. I was faithful to you before, but now I’ve lost all hope. When I arrive in Etchmiadzin, I’ll do whatever is in the best interests of my people.

Yerevan standoff

Depending on interpretation, Andranik decided to march on or toward Yerevan. After three weeks of journeying along the snow-covered paths in the Daralagiaz district, Andranik and his division arrived at Etchmiadzin’s Ararat station. Dro, who at the time was the Assistant of Military Affairs, Sargis Minasian, Assistant to the Minister of the Interior, and other state officials went to greet Andranik.^[1]: 448 The state officials offered to transport Andranik’s worn out soldiers to Yerevan by train. Andranik rejected the invitation; his mindset that Russian Armenian leaders were traitors was still with him.^[4]: 86 In reality, Andranik was preparing to disband his division and leave his ammunition to the Catholicos, Gevorg V. However, an incident occurred in the midst of his execution of the plan.

A. Terzipashian reported that on the way to Yerevan, a policeman stopped one of Andranik’s soldiers on the Zanku Bridge and conducted a search. Using the search as a pretext, the policeman stole the soldier’s purse. An argument broke out, drawing more of Andranik’s soldiers to the scene, who seized and restrained the policeman.^[1]: 449 A government officer then intervened and opened fire on the soldiers, prompting them to return fire. The clash quickly escalated, and as news spread, Dro arrived with a battalion of troops. The fighting resumed, resulting in numerous casualties. By the time the news reached Andranik, it had been heavily exaggerated. Outraged by the reports, he immediately donned his military uniform, disarmed the state police and Etchmiadzin’s soldiers, imprisoned their officers, severed telephone and telegraph connections, and left a hundred of his men to guard Etchmiadzin. Leading the remaining infantry and cavalry toward Yerevan, Andranik was soon met on the Zanku Bridge by Bishop Tirair, who had been sent by the Catholicos of Etchmiadzin. The bishop pleaded with him not to advance toward the capital.^[1]: 449 Andranik issued an ultimatum to the bishop, demanding that within one hour all of his dead, wounded, and imprisoned soldiers be returned. Bishop Tirair hurried to the capital to deliver the message to the authorities. In response, Brigadier General Keith Maitland Davie, head of the British Military Mission in Yerevan, went to the scene and attempted to calm Andranik, assuring him that those responsible would be punished. Following this, Andranik returned to Etchmiadzin.^[1]: 450

According to Simon Vratsian, on April 19, the day before Easter, Yerevan’s market was crowded with villagers selling vegetables and numerous soldiers shopping. An argument broke out between Andranik’s volunteers and the regular soldiers of Yerevan, leading to fighting in which one of Andranik’s soldiers was wounded. Another soldier rushed to Etchmiadzin and reported that the Yerevan government had ordered a massacre of Andranik’s men. In response, Andranik’s forces took positions on the hills surrounding the capital. The government sent American envoys and clergymen to persuade Andranik not to attack the city. By evening, the siege was lifted, and Andranik returned to Etchmiadzin.^[1]: 450

As Dro recounted to Vardges Aharonian in New York in 1954, in March 1919 the government received news that Andranik and his division had arrived at Davalu from Zangezur. Dro ordered the “Sulukitze wagon” attached to a locomotive at the Yerevan train station and departed to meet Andranik. Upon reaching Davalu, he found that Andranik had already left for Kamarlu. Dro then took some cavalry and proceeded to Kamarlu, but Andranik was not there either. On his return to Yerevan, Dro encountered Andranik in the vineyards on the outskirts of the city.^[1]: 450 Dro and Andranik’s meeting was reportedly cordial. Dro invited Andranik to visit Yerevan as an official guest of the government, but Andranik declined. Dro responded, “If you don’t want to be the guest of the government, you can be my guest,” to which Andranik replied, “I can be your guest anywhere else, but I won’t come to Yerevan.”^[1]: 451 Andranik then continued toward Etchmiadzin, accompanied by Dro, who supplied his troops before returning to Yerevan. After learning of the incident involving Andranik’s volunteers at the Yerevan market, Dro sent Colonel Tarkhanian to restore order. Tarkhanian ordered his soldiers to fire in the air, but one soldier accidentally shot one of Andranik’s volunteers. The news quickly reached Dro, and he and Andranik soon faced each other with their respective forces. In a desperate response, Dro sent the following letter to Andranik in an attempt to defuse the situation:^[1]: 451

Dear Andranik:

We are a generation of revolutionaries that have been inspired by your heroic struggles in Sassun. Today you are invading Yerevan on the basis of false or greatly exaggerated reports by some drunkards.

I beg you, as my former commander whom I have always admired and worshipped, not to stain your revolutionary record. Stop this invasion.

If you persist in your intentions, I warn you that as military commander of the Yerevan district, I will be forced to resort to arms, and I assure you that you will fail in your objective.

Andranik and the division returned to Etchmiadzin soon after receiving the letter.^[1]: 451