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ABDULBARI
BARLAS
Father’s Name: Mehmet Emin
Mother’s Name: Ayse
Place of Birth: Van-Saglamtas
Date of Birth: 1919
As I have heard from my father, the Russians invaded our country,
but there were no phones, no radio so the villagers could
not understand where abouts the enemy come from. My father
had a cousin named Abdulkadir and my father had told to him
“I am so sick and my son (my brother) is a soldier on the
Iranian front, he fights against the Russians. Go and get
information”. So Abdulkadir goes. There is a meadow behind
those hills, when he climbs up the hill, he sees that the
people of Ercis are running away. Abdulkadir comes to my father
and says “All the people of Talat Aga are running away”. Then
my father decides to leave the village. They immediately begin
preparations.
The season is spring, they leave the village with ox carts,
but the animals are not ready for such a journey and they
quickly get tired. They go as far as the hill standing on
the southeast border of the village. But most of the villagers
give up. The imam of the village asks my father “where are
the Russians, where are the Armenians? Who are you running
away from?” My father answers “this is not a clan war! This
is the Russian war. We do not have cannons, rifles. We have
to run away.” In the morning my father’s family and the Sheikh
family set up again. However, people of the other thirty-eight
houses stay.
The day after my father leaves the village; the villagers
see that the Russians guided by the Armenians are coming.
All the villagers begin to run through the stream, but the
horsemen circle them and they immediately kill most of them.
Later they gather the others in to a house on the hill. Two
armed Armenians watch the door, and two Armenians kill all
people with bayonets. Only a woman and a little girl are alive
by remaining in silent among the dead bodies. As she told
my father later that her name was Azime and the girls was
Rusen.
As Ms. Azime told, she waited until the night in silence.
She straightened out she called out if there was anybody who
was alive. Only that little girl answered her. So she takes
that girl and goes to Siirt passing through the mountains,
which is a long and painful story.. Everyone knows the place
of those martyrs. But, I don’t know under which ruin they
are in. But, there are many other places as such. As I told
you before, the Armenians passed through the hill by killing
everybody they saw on the way.
My father’s family and the Sheikh family went to Diyarbakir,
Farikin. When they arrived, they harvested the crops. Later
on the government sent them to Konya because of epidemy where
they stayed for three years. Later, they returned to our village.
* Cousin of Abdulbari Barlas, Abdulhamit Barlas showed the
place where the Turkish villagers were killed by the Armenian
bandits. He said that the villagers who migrated found countless
human bones here. As those bones could not be collected under
the circumstances of that time, they all disappeared. In this
village, the Armenians killed 150-200 people.
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