Edited sentence: On 24 April 1915, the fourth day of the siege, Jevdet Bey, the Ottoman governor, sent a telegram to the Interior Ministry asking permission to send the Muslim civilian population to provinces further west, given the conditions and the Russian advance.Records from different sources reveal the issue had many dimensions.The emigrated Muslims could not return to their homes until 2 April 1918, which gives a rough sense of the time that the region was a war zone.The ones that did not leave were faced with some hardship in the war zone.There are also accounts of how most of the Muslims fled the region.Under these conditions, the Armenian defenders of Van with the leadership of Aram of Van, established a local provisional government