Massacres in Harput District

Massacres in Harput District also Kharput were a large scale of massacres that happened in the district. The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America's Response - Page 334 by Peter Balakian 

 Background 
In May 1915, before the start of the deportations, the authorities in Harput began to mount systematic searches for arms in Armenian shops and homes in the twin cities and the surrounding villages. The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey: A Disputed Genocide - Page 168 by Lewy, Guenter

In the words of an eye-witness.

Denmark's minister in Turkey during the First World War. "The Turks are vigorously carrying through their cruel intention, to exterminate the Armenian people," Carl Wandel wrote on 3 July 1915. The Bishop of Karput was ordered to leave Aleppo within 48 hours "and it has later been learned that this Bishop and all the clergy that accompanied him have been ... killed between Diyarbekir and Urfa at a place where approximately 1,700 Armenian families have suffered the same fate ... In Angora ... approximately 6,000 men ... have been shot on the road ... even here in Constantinople (Istanbul), Armenians are being abducted and sent to Asia ..." You're talking nonsense, Mr Ambassador By Robert Fisk

 Attacks by Kurds 
The first sign of dangers was the appearance on the plain of bands of Kurds from the regions north and east. Villages were attacked, looted and burned, while the villagers were killed or scattered. For a time the marauders seemed to hold aloof from the city itself, but as they kept on their course of pillage their appetite for plunder was whetted, and they looked with avaricious eyes at the city on the hill. Turkey and the Armenian Atrocities by Edwin Munsell Bliss, p.428

Related pages
 Genocide
 Adana massacre
 Armenian Genocide
 Hamidian massacres

 References 

Category:Armenian genocide
Category:Massacres in Turkey