Referring to notes from the personal diary of Russian General L.  Odishe Liyetze on the Turkish front, he wrote,  "On the nights 11-12 March, 1918 alone Armenian butchers   bayoneted and axed to death 3000 Muslims in areas surrounding  Erzincan. These barbars threw their victims into pits, most  likely dug according to their sinister plans to extinguish   Muslims, in groups of 80. My adjutant counted and unearthed  200 such pits. This is an act against our world of civilization."  On March 12, 1918 Lieut-colonel Griyaznof wrote (from an official Russian account of the Turkish genocide),  "Roads leading to villages were littered with bayoneted torsos,  dismembered joints and carved out organs of Muslim peasants...  alas! mainly of women and children."  Source: Doc. Dr. Azmi Suslu, "Russian View on the Atrocities Committed         by the Armenians Against the Turks," Ankara Universitesi, Ankara,         1987, pp. 45-53.         "Document No: 77," Archive No: 1-2, Cabin No: 10, Drawer          No: 4, File No: 410, Section No: 1578, Contents No: 1-12, 1-18.         (Acting Commander of Erzurum and Deveboynu regions and Commander         of the Second Erzurum Artillery Regiment Prisoner of War,         Lieutenant Colonel Toverdodleyov)  "The things I have heard and seen during the two months, until the  liberation of Erzurum by the Turks, have surpassed all the  allegations concerning the vicious, degenerate characteristic of  the Armenians. During the Russian occupation of Erzurum, no Armenian  was permitted to approach the city and its environs.   While the Commander of the First Army Corps, General Kaltiyin remained  in power, troops including Armenian enlisted men, were not sent to the  area. When the security measures were lifted, the Armenians began to   attack Erzurum and its surroundings. Following the attacks came the  plundering of the houses in the city and the villages and the murder  of the owners of these houses...Plundering was widely committed by  the soldiers. This plunder was mainly committed by Armenian soldiers  who had remained in the rear during the war.   One day, while passing through the streets on horseback, a group of  soldiers including an Armenian soldier began to drag two old men of  seventy years in a certain direction. The roads were covered with mud,  and these people were dragging the two helpless Turks through the mud  and dirt...   It was understood later that all these were nothing but tricks and  traps. The Turks who joined the gendarmarie soon changed their minds  and withdrew. The reason was that most of the Turks who were on night  patrol did not return, and no one knew what had happened to them. The   Turks who had been sent outside the city for labour began to disappear  also. Finally, the Court Martial which had been established for the  trials of murderers and plunderers, began to liquidate itself for  fear that they themselves would be punished. The incidents of murder  and rape, which had decreased, began to occur more frequently.   Sometime in January and February, a leading Turkish citizen Haci Bekir  Efendi from Erzurum, was killed one night at his home. The Commander  in Chief (Odiselidge) gave orders to find murderers within three days.  The Commander in Chief has bitterly reminded the Armenian intellectuals  that disobedience among the Armenian enlisted men had reached its  highest point, that they had insulted and robbed the people and half  of the Turks sent outside the city had not returned.   ...We learnt the details this incident from the Commander-in-Chief,  Odishelidge. They were as follows:   The killings were organized by the doctors and the employers, and the  act of killing was committed solely by the Armenian renegades...  More than eight hundred unarmed and defenceless Turks have been  killed in Erzincan. Large holes were dug and the defenceless   Turks were slaughtered like animals next to the holes. Later, the  murdered Turks were thrown into the holes. The Armenian who stood   near the hole would say when the hole was filled with the corpses:  'Seventy dead bodies, well, this hole can take ten more.' Thus ten  more Turks would be cut into pieces, thrown into the hole, and when  the hole was full it would be covered over with soil.   The Armenians responsible for the act of murdering would frequently  fill a house with eighty Turks, and cut their heads off one by one.  Following the Erzincan massacre, the Armenians began to withdraw  towards Erzurum... The Armenian renegades among those who withdrew  to Erzurum from Erzincan raided the Moslem villages on the road, and  destroyed the entire population, together with the villages.   During the transportation of the cannons, ammunition and the carriages  that were outside the war area, certain people were hired among the   Kurdish population to conduct the horse carriages. While the travellers  were passing through Erzurum, the Armenians took advantage of the time  when the Russian soldiers were in their dwellings and began to kill  the Kurds they had hired. When the Russian soldiers heard the cries  of the dying Kurds, they attempted to help them. However, the   Armenians threatened the Russian soldiers by vowing that they would  have the same fate if they intervened, and thus prevented them from  acting. All these terrifying acts of slaughter were committed with  hatred and loathing.   Lieutenant Medivani from the Russian Army described an incident that  he witnessed in Erzurum as follows: An Armenian had shot a Kurd. The  Kurd fell down but did not die. The Armenian attempted to force the  stick in his hand into the mouth of the dying Kurd. However, since  the Kurd had firmly closed his jaws in his agony, the Armenian failed  in his attempt. Having seen this, the Armenian ripped open the abdomen  of the Kurd, disembowelled him, and finally killed him by stamping  him with the iron heel of his boot.   Odishelidge himself told us that all the Turks who could not escape  from the village of Ilica were killed. Their heads had been cut off  by axes. He also told us that he had seen thousands of murdered  children. Lieutenant Colonel Gryaznov, who passed through the village  of Ilica, three weeks after the massacre told us the following:   There were thousands of dead bodies hacked to pieces, on the roads.  Every Armenian who happened to pass through these roads, cursed and  spat on the corpses. In the courtyard of a mosque which was about  25x30 meter square, dead bodies were piled to a height of 140   centimeters. Among these corpses were men and women of every age,  children and old people. The women's bodies had obvious marks of  rape. The genitals of many girls were filled with gun-powder.   A few educated Armenian girls, who worked as telephone operators  for the Armenian troops were called by Lieutenant Colonel Gryaznov  to the courtyard of the mosque and he bitterly told them to be   proud of what the Armenians had done. To the lieutenant colonel's  disgusted amazement, the Armenian girls started to laugh and giggle,  instead of being horrified. The lieutenant colonel had severely  reprimanded those girls for their indecent behaviour. When he told  the girls that the Armenians, including women, were generally more  licentious than even the wildest animals, and that their indecent  and shameful laughter was the most obvious evidence of their inhumanity  and barbarity, before a scene that appalled even veteran soldiers,  the Armenian girls finally remembered their sense of shame and  claimed they had laughed because they were nervous.   An Armenian contractor at the Alaca Communication zone command  narrated the following incident which took place on February 20:   The Armenians had nailed a Turkish women to the wall. They had cut  out the women's heart and placed the heart on top of her head.  The great massacre in Erzurum began on February 7... The enlisted men   of the artillery division caught and stripped 270 people. Then they  took these people into the bath to satisfy their lusts. 100 people  among this group were able to save their lives as the result of  my decisive attempts. The others, the Armenians claimed, were   released when they learnt that I understood what was going on.   Among those who organized this treacherous act was the envoy to the  Armenian officers, Karagodaviev. Today, some Turks were murdered  on the streets.   On February 12, some Armenians have shot more than ten innocent  Moslems. The Russian soldiers who attempted to save these people were  threatened with death. Meanwhile I imprisoned an Armenian for  murdering an innocent Turk.    When an Armenian officer told an Armenian murderer that he would   be hanged for his crime, the killer shouted furiously: 'How dare  you hang an Armenian for killing a Turk?' In Erzurum, the   Armenians burned down the Turkish market. On February 17, I heard  that the entire population of Tepekoy village, situated within  the artillery area, had been totally annihilated. On the same   day when Antranik entered Erzurum, I reported the massacre to  him, and asked him to track down the perpetrators of this horrible  act. However no result was achieved.   In the villages whose inhabitants had been massacred, there was a  natural silence. On the night of 26/27 February, the Armenians deceived  the Russians, perpetrated a massacre and escaped for fear of the   Turkish soldiers. Later, it was understood that this massacre had  been based upon a method organized and planned in a circular.   The population had been herded in a certain place and then killed  one by one. The number of murders committed on that night reached  three thousand. It was the Armenians who bragged to about the details  of the massacre. The Armenians fighting against the Turkish soldiers  were so few in number and so cowardly that they could not even  withstand the Turkish soldiers who consisted of only five hundred  people and two cannons, for one night, and ran away. The leading  Armenians of the community could have prevented this massacre.  However, the Armenian intellectuals had shared the same ideas with  the renegades in this massacre, just as in all the others. The lower  classes within the Armenian community have always obeyed the orders  of the leading Armenian figures and commanders.    I do not like to give the impression that all Armenian intellectuals  were accessories to these murders. No, for there were people who  opposed the Armenians for such actions, since they understood that  it would yield no result. However, such people were only a minority.  Furthermore, such people were considered as traitors to the Armenian  cause. Some have seemingly opposed the Armenian murders but have  supported the massacres secretly. Some, on the other hand, preferred  to remain silent. There were certain others, who, when accused by  the Russians of infamy, would say the following: 'You are Russians.  You can never understand the Armenian cause.' The Armenians had a  conscience. They would commit massacres and then would flee in fear  of the Turkish soldiers."   Serdar Argic