The Victims of “Safety”: The Destiny of Armenian Women and Girls Who Were Not Deported from Trabzon

Abstract

AbstractGiven its proximity to the Russian border, the city of Trabzon was a strategic port for the Young Turk government against the backdrop of war with Russia. While there is an extensive body of literature about Trabzon during the Armenian Genocide, the experiences of Armenian women and girls who stayed in the city remain unexamined. This chapter draws on the Trabzon trials and survivor testimonies to explore their experiences.While Trabzon Armenians received an official order of deportation, on June 26, 1915, the Vali Cemal Azmi made an “exemption” for Armenian women in later stages of pregnancy and for children “when the parents so desired.” Girls up to 15 years old and boys up to 10 years old remained and were placed in large houses throughout the city. After four years, all male children disappeared, and the girls who survived mostly did so in Turkish households to which they were given as gifts or sold to serve as a wives, servants, or sex slaves.In 1919, the Turkish Courts-Martial brought the perpetrators of the Armenian Genocide to trial in Constantinople. Cemal Azmi, Yenibahçeli Nail, who was the Committee on Union and Progress secretary for Trabzon, and five officials who worked with him stood before the court. The charges against them included organizing and implementing the massive annihilation of the Trabzon Armenians, the plunder of their property, the rape and murder of women and children, and the drowning of around 50 pregnant women in the Black sea. There were 20 sessions of the Trabzon trial, held between March 26 and May 20, 1919, during which witnesses and survivors testified. Among them were Misses Siranush Manukian, Philomene Nurian, Sofia Makhokhian, Aruseak Gylchian, Miss Arabian, and other women who witnessed mass drownings, were survivors of rape, forced marriages, and forced prostitution. The trial was extensively covered by both the Armenian and the Turkish press, whose representatives were present at the daily hearings. Close examination of these women's testimonies and other shreds of evidence of this trial shows how gendered the Armenian genocide was and how women were targeted for both their gender and national identity.