In recent decades, much important work has been done on the Armenian deportation and genocide that draws on previously inaccessible Ottoman archival materials.Footnote 1 However, in the process, there has been a corresponding tendency to downplay, either explicitly or through neglect, the value of largely untapped Armenian-language source materials, including personal memoirs and diaries.Footnote 2 Until recently, few researchers in this area have possessed the language skills to hone in on both Armenian-language and Ottoman Turkish-language materials, and as a result, scholars who rely predominantly on one set of sources have tended to marginalize the other. A more well-rounded approach that is able to make use of sources in various languages can only benefit the field.

This chapter builds on one such document, a diary, written by a young Krikor Bogharian (1897–1975),Footnote 3 that serves as a non-state primary resource, providing insight into what being a survivor meant in a genocidal moment. The diary takes us to early twentieth-century Aintab, modern-day Gaziantep, fifty-five kilometers to the west of the Euphrates and forty-five kilometers to the north of the modern Turkish-Syrian border. The Armenian deportation is presented as a first-person account, through the experience of an Armenian from the city of Aintab. This chapter, based on the diary entries Bogharian penned as he struggled through this disastrous time, sheds light on the deportation experiences of Aintab Armenians. While sharing tales of extraordinary suffering faced by ordinary people who were exiled and annihilated, it narrates the stories of those who survived to tell their tale about how they trekked through the desert under unimaginable conditions. This chapter analyzes the diary and shares detailed information about both the personal and the family life of Bogharian, in addition to the suffering endured by the Armenian deportees.

Krikor Bogharian, who was deported to Aleppo, then Hama, and finally to Salamiyya alongside his entire family, kept a diary about his life from August 11, 1915 to December 19, 1916. Bogharian’s self-narration zooms in on a small area within Bilad al-Sham, which as a whole, is the Levant region, encompassing the Eastern Mediterranean. His entries highlight the daily struggle of the Armenian population to survive for more than three years. The regions of Hama and Salamiyya became “home” to the largest number of Aintab Armenians, where they suffered disease, epidemics, and death.

On the eve of war, Aintab had an Armenian population that numbered somewhere between 36,000 and 40,000.Footnote 4 It was urban Armenians of Aintab, in particular, who were deported to Salamiyya’s agricultural district. At the time, Salamiyya, with its population of around 6000, was a district located in the southeast of Hama, some seven hours on foot from Homs. The inhabitants were predominantly members of the Ismaili sect, while the few Sunnis were the government officials of the town.

Bogharian’s diary is unique for its immediacy. He wrote in the heat of the moment and his entries reflect the language of his time and the proximity of the events he recorded as they unfolded before his eyes on a daily basis. As Salim Tamari demonstrates in the case of Ihsan Salih Turjman’s diary, Bogharian’s diary is “unfiltered and unreconstructed by retrospective thought.”Footnote 5 As a wartime document, its power lies in the way that it exposes the texture of daily life. Bogharian’s diary reveals intimate aspects of the victim experience during the Armenian Genocide. The diary, with its attention to detail, proves invaluable for its depiction of local settings and what was going on at the micro level from the perspective of a deportee and it is “written with intimacy and simple but keen reflections on an encircled city.”Footnote 6 It contains a wealth of observation on daily life in Salamiyya in 1915 and 1916. Bogharian’s world was permeated by deportation and by the impending catastrophe that would include disease, starvation, forced conversion, and sexual violence committed against Armenian women and girls.

The “objectivity” of personal narratives, such as survival accounts, as verifiable historical document in comparison to archival documents is a topic of debate. As such, materials such as memoirs, autobiographies and diaries should be approached with caution, with it being necessary to test their reliability and validity. Yet, these types of texts should be examined not in terms of how coherently they are analyzed by the different actors who are witnesses of the concerned era, but rather how they narrate the events. It is impossible to objectify historical thinking. Historical thinking is simultaneously dynamic, fluid and porous. In the case of Holocaust literature, for instance, Polish historian Marta Cobel-Tokarska argues that personal documents constitute “a more valuable source of knowledge about the opinions, feelings and psychological state of individuals, their perception of reality and the place these individuals see for themselves in this reality, than information about the actual course of historical events, especially those in which the author of a testimony did not participate.”Footnote 7 Many scholars rely on first-person accounts in the absence of additional sources. Bogharian’s diary, as a survivor account, helps us to recognize the advantage of individual, unique perspectives on the Armenian Genocide inherent in such a primary source.

The diary was published in Beirut, in 1973, as a chapter in a general work entitled “The genocidal Turk: Eyewitness accounts culled from the accounts of people who were miraculously saved.” This chapter is eighty-one pages long (the pages measure 5.5 by 9.4 inches [14 by 21.3 centimeters]).Footnote 8

Deportations in Aintab

The deportation of Aintab’s Armenians began in August 1915,Footnote 9 late compared to the deportations in most eastern regions. Previously, Aintab Armenians had relied upon the honesty and kindness of Celal Bey, Şükrü Bey, and Hilmi Bey to shield them from deportation.Footnote 10 The period of wishful thinking ended when Cemal Bey, general secretary of Aleppo’s CUP branch, arrived in late June, accompanied by a few propagandists. The mission of this Unionist cadre was to convince Aintab’s notables to repeat their entreaties to Istanbul to issue a deportation order. Cemal Bey succeeded in pressuring the local CUP and other Muslim leaders to send new slander letters to the capital. On June 21, 1915, the German consul at Aleppo, Walter Rössler, reported that Governor Celal Bey was to be removed from his post because of his refusal to deport Armenians.Footnote 11 Indeed on June 30, in a reshuffling of provincial governorships, Bekir Sami Bey was given the Aleppo seat, while Celal Bey was moved to Konya.Footnote 12 On July 5, Celal left Aleppo. Aram Andonian mourned, noting in his Aintab file: “Aintab Turks collaborating with Unionists in Aleppo [have] succeeded in removing the honest, charitable, and reasonable governor of Aleppo from his post.”Footnote 13

Still, as late as July 17, Aintab’s own district governor, Şükrü Bey, was able to inform the Ministry of Interior that no Armenian had been deported [harice çıkarılmadı] from Aintab.Footnote 14 Dissatisfied with that state of affairs, Talat replaced Şükrü with Ahmed Faik (Erner) on July 26, 1915.Footnote 15 Around the same time, Hilmi Bey, Aintab’s military commander, also resigned.Footnote 16 On July 29, the local CUP at last received an “affirmative” reply to its entreaties from the central government, and Aintab was added to the deportation list.Footnote 17 By the time Ahmed Faik Bey reached Aintab on August 26, the deportation had already begun.

Once they received the anticipated news from Istanbul, local Young Turks called an emergency meeting and prepared the list of Armenians to be deported.Footnote 18 The very next day Rössler notified his superiors that the order to deport Armenians from Aintab and Kilis “had just been issued.”Footnote 19 The American representative passed the news along to his ambassador a few days later, adding that the order also applied to Antakya, Alexandretta, and Kesab.Footnote 20 In Beşgöz, located between Aintab and Kilis, the people of the village were discussing the fact that the Aintab deportation was to commence the next day. After a while, a well-dressed gentleman, by his appearance a Circassian, wearing a combination of civilian and officer’s clothing, joined them and inquired from which part of the town people would leave, which road they would take, what kind of people were to be deported and what one could possibly pilfer from them.Footnote 21 “When one of those present asked him if he was a civilian or a member of the military,” he grinned slyly and questioned rhetorically, “Is there a more opportune moment to be a soldier than the present one?”Footnote 22 On July 30, fifty Armenian families were ordered to leave Aintab within the next twenty-four hours.Footnote 23 Their deportation began on August 1, 1915.Footnote 24

On August 1, the first convoy comprising these families (approximately 400 Armenians)Footnote 25 departed with light belongings, locking their doors and leaving behind nearly all their assets.Footnote 26 On August 7, a second convoy of fifty more Armenian families was deported.Footnote 27 On the same day, gangs, formed by peasants from the villages of Tılbaşar, Mezra, Kinisli, Kantara, Ekiz Kapı, Bahne Hameyli, and Sazgın, attacked the deportees. These chetes were led by Emin Efendi, the manager of Ziraat Bankası (Agricultural Bank).Footnote 28 The second convoy was systematically pillaged by gangs less than a day’s march from Aintab.Footnote 29 Meanwhile, a third convoy that departed on August 8 was composed of one hundred families from the Kayacık and Akyol neighborhoods.Footnote 30 Similar to the deportees from previous convoys, these people headed out with carts, camels, and other draught animals early in the morning. After spending the night at Sazgın village, they were led to Akçakoyunlu railroad station.Footnote 31 The fourth convoy left Aintab on August 11 and consisted of 120 families, many of them well-off, from the Kayacık, İbn-i Eyüp, and Kastelbaşı neighborhoods.Footnote 32 On August 13,Footnote 33 the fifth convoy of over 120 families (approximately 1200 people) departed from Eblahan and Akyol.Footnote 34

On August 23, the sixth convoy reached Akçakoyunlu with around 120 Armenian families from Kayacık, the neighborhood of Surp Asdvadzadzin (St. Mary, Armenian Orthodox) Church, Eblahan, İbn-i Eyüp, and Kastelbaşı. Unlike other convoys, those from Aintab included men, women, and children over the age of ten.Footnote 35 From Akçakoyunlu, the first two groups were sent to Damascus. The rest were held in a transit camp surrounded by barbed wire while waiting to be loaded into stock cars for transport to Aleppo. These deportees were later sent on foot to the region of Deir ez-Zor.Footnote 36 While the exact number of deportees, the death toll, and the number of survivors are unknown, it is estimated that the number of deported Armenians from Aintab was approximately 32,000, with 20,000 perishing in the genocide and 12,000 surviving.Footnote 37 Those deported via the Homs-Hama-Damascus route were more likely to survive, as the majority were allowed to convert to Islam.Footnote 38

Krikor Bogharian in Exile and His Diary: Conditions of Deportees

Krikor Bogharian, at age 18, was on the fourth convoy deported on August 11, 1915. Along with his family and siblings, he was sent to Aleppo, and then to Hama and then to Salamiyya. A diligent and intelligent young man, Bogharian was born to Priest Karekin Bogharian, a prominent cleric, in Aintab in 1897. He completed his secondary educational studies at the Vartanian School in 1912.Footnote 39 According to archival records located at Beirut’s Haigazian University Library, Bogharian was a successful student at the Vartanian School, which taught courses in Armenian, Ottoman, French, and English.Footnote 40 After graduating from the Vartanian School, he went on to study at Cilicia College, which was founded in Aintab that same year.Footnote 41 However, his studies were cut short during his final year when he and his family were targeted for deportation. Bogharian was able to endure the treacherous environment faced by the families exiled to Hama and Salamiyya thanks in part to the texts he brought from the collection that his father—a notable bookseller and the local official representing the Armenian daily newspaper Püzantion (Byzantium), published out of Istanbul,—had acquired over the years.Footnote 42 It was this setting in which he was raised that contributed to his inclination to books, his decision to maintain a journal of his experiences, and that prompted his father to bring along a chest filled with books when leaving Aintab.Footnote 43

According to some survivor accounts, Armenians were told that they could leave everything, lock their doors, and either hold onto their keys or leave them with a neighbor or the mukhtar (village head).Footnote 44 They were also assured that the government would carefully seal their properties and protect them.Footnote 45 As one of the first deportees to leave Aintab, neither Bogharian nor his family members realized the murderous crimes committed against the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire. They were promised that this was a temporary arrangement and that they would return to their homes in a few months.Footnote 46 However, as months rolled by in their new land with the realization that there was no returning home, the Bogharians came to understand the stark realities of exile, altering this initial belief.

Apart from Krikor himself, the Bogharian family included his father, Karekin Bogharian (forty-eight years old); his mother, Santukh (thirty-eight); his sister, Hripsime (nine); and his brothers, Khatchig (sixteen), Norayr (eleven), and Nubar (four or five).Footnote 47 Krikor Bogharian states that their journey to Akçakoyunlu was uneventful and the people responsible for their protection were serious about their safety. Having spent the night of August 11 in tents pitched outside on an open field close to the Sazgın village, the convoy arrived in the railroad station after a one-day journey. When they reached this destination, they came upon other deportees, for instance from Fındıcak, a town in Marash, waiting for trains in hundreds of tents.

Members of Bogharian’s convoy also set up their tents and started to wait for the train, which would take them to Aleppo then to Hama. Lieutenant Yasin (Kutluğ) Efendi was in charge of controlling and managing deportations there. In his diary, Bogharian depicts Yasin as a man who seemed kind but sometimes treated deportees cruelly and punished them with the whip he carried.Footnote 48 After the war, he escaped to Ankara, joined the Kemalist-nationalist forces (Kuvayi Milliye) and became a deputy for Aintab in the first parliament founded in 1920.Footnote 49 Bogharian shares an anecdote about Yasin Efendi, who visited their tent while inspecting the surrounding area. He ordered the chest filled with books to be opened and asked Bogharian’s father what these books were. Karekin convinced him that they were on baptism and funeral ceremonies. Yasin allowed him to keep his books and in return Karekin gave him a handmade embroidery as a gift.Footnote 50

The Bogharians reached Hama along with other deportees on August 16, 1915, where they were greeted by Armenians from Aintab, Kilis, Marash, Kığı, Fındıcak and Van. He explains that as there was no convenient place for one to relieve oneself, a disgusting smell had permeated everywhere. For those who had money, there were shops. This is how Bogharian portrays the place they were staying in Hama:

We were living under the scorching sun, in a filthy place. Naturally, we had many difficulties but still we were close to the city and thank God we were able to purchase the things we needed easily and freely. Two loaves of bread were sold for one metelik [according to Ottoman currency, 1 metelik equals to 0.25 piaster].Footnote 51

Accompanying the last convoy of Aintab Armenians on August 19 were Armenians from Antioch and Kesab. Bogharian underlines that his family was able to get some cash by selling some of the items they brought with them. He recounts that they sold “three carpets for 31 mecidiyes [according to Ottoman currency, one mecidiye equals to twenty piasters], a large pot for three mecidiyes, a blanket for 1.15 mecidiyes and a silk bundle for one mecidiye.”Footnote 52 On August 26, another group of Aintab Armenians reached the refugee station in Hama and was also sent south. Toward the evening, Armenians from Fındıcak and Marash were deported to Homs with camels. The next evening, there were deportees from Aintab on the two trains passing through the station in Hama. They were in a miserable state. The evening after, some of them from Kilis and Marash were again sent to Homs. On September 14, fifteen more families from Aintab arrived in Hama. Around 400 families from Aintab, Kilis and Marash were settled at the center of Hama. On September 15, Armenians from Konya, Siverek, Sivas and other places arrived. Most had been robbed and were sick.

On October 14, Bogharian jots another important note in his diary and specifies the origins of the deportees who had been in Hama since they arrived: Aintab, Marash, Antioch, Kesab-Suediye, Kilis, Kayseri, Samsun, Sivas and its villages; Amasya and its villages; Komerza (Tomarza in Kayseri), Gürün, Kığı, İskenderun, Dörtyol, Konya, Hacin, Diyarbakır, Ehneş, Siverek, Harput, Bakır-Maden, Viranşehir, Vezirköprü, Agn, Cihan, Beylan, and more.Footnote 53

In his diary, Bogharian recounts that seventy-nine families, including his own, began preparations to depart for Salamiyya on October 20. Among these families were also Bogharian’s grandfather, uncle, eldest brother-in-law and many neighboring families from Aintab. On October 21, they arrived in Salamiyya and spent that night at Barsumian’s and Gouzougian’s place.Footnote 54 After coming to Salamiyya, the first thing they did was to find jobs. All houses for rent were built out of mud-bricks. Monthly rent rates increased to almost sixty piasters. Bogharian and his family rented a house close to the market and the main road for thirty-three piasters a month. In the meantime, new deportees from Aintab were being placed in Salamiyya.

Starvation, Epidemics and Sexual Abuse

As Melanie S. Tanielian states, hunger, starvation, malnutrition and its associated diseases were “far more deadly than the bullets and shells of the enemy” during the WWI.Footnote 55 Greater Syria was afflicted with famine, and the provision of food to civilians gave way to battles over political power.Footnote 56 By the early spring of 1915, “grain and flour shortages had become a serious issue in the Greater Syrian provinces of the Ottoman Empire, and culminated into a full-fledged famine that would claim the lives of approximately one-third of population by the time Allied troops began occupying the region in October 1918.”Footnote 57 Similarly, the famine that devastated the population in Salamiyya transformed the city into a sprawling expanse of open graves due to the surging number of deaths from starvation. While the hardships the Armenian population in Salamiyya withstood were certainly a consequence of the 1915–1916 famine that struck Syria and Lebanon, the decisions that the CUP, helmed by Cemal Pasha, implemented in Beirut and throughout the Syrian provinces exacerbated the harsh conditions for Armenians who had been deported to the region.Footnote 58 Bogharian recorded this situation in his personal journal, noting that in Salamiyya by late October 1915, eighty deaths from disease and starvation were being reported each day, and residents had begun to face daily struggles in obtaining basic food and materials.Footnote 59 The gravity of the situation had worsened by November 20, and Bogharian wrote that residents were making bread from whatever grain was available. A growing number of individuals were in dire need of assistance, including his father, Nerses Tavukjian, and many others. In total, Bogharian recorded 3050 residents requiring aid: 573 men and 1273 women who had fallen ill, 264 men and 706 women whose spouses or parents had perished, and 55 men and 179 women who required some other form of assistance.Footnote 60

Bogharian himself visited a state physician on several occasions as he had developed typhus, suggesting that government-appointed medical practitioners were working in the city. In a journal entry dated January 12, 1916, he wrote that a group of Protestant Armenians had been deported from Aintab to Deir ez-Zor amid brutal winter weather,Footnote 61 while death and disease continued to proliferate in Aleppo and Hama. A group of Armenians deported from Bursa were forced to remain near Azez in Syria, where they were left without housing or assistance in the frigid winter, receiving no assistance from the local Turkish population. The corpses of Armenians who had died of starvation or hypothermia were strewn about the area.

The lack of adequate food precipitated a seemingly insurmountable threat by February, around the time that Ali Kemal Bey, the newly appointed district governor of Salamiyya, had arrived in the region. Bogharian depicts him as an official bearing negative opinion about the Armenian population.

Arab emirs and princes attempted to provide some assistance and protection. The brothers Emir Tamir and Emir Marza were two such Arab figures.Footnote 62 As the impacts of the famine and lack of adequate resources began to deepen in March 1916, malaria, spotted typhus, cholera, and a slew of other deadly and contagious ailments emerged in Bilad al-Sham and Salamiyya and were among the most persistent threats to the Armenian families living in exile there. March 13 marked the passage of seven months since the Aintab Armenians had been deported to Salamiyya, and the group discovered on April 6 that one-third of the Armenians, totaling approximately 100 individuals, had died while being forcibly deported to Deir ez-Zor from various causes, including hypothermia, consuming poisonous plants, and starvation.Footnote 63 September of that year once again saw a considerable increase in the death rate and disease as the famine persisted. Mass burial ceremonies and brief prayer offerings were all that were afforded to the growing number of deceased Armenians.

In addition to the rampant starvation, illness, physical attacks, and weariness that they suffered, Armenian women and girls faced sexual assault and degradation for prolonged periods of time. The growing number of Armenian widows prompted a corresponding increase in the prevalence of female-headed households, and many women were forced to engage in prostitution—today referred to as “survival sex.”Footnote 64 The trajectory these women followed into prostitution was either through direct exploitation or a lack of viable alternatives, and this phenomenon was most widespread among Armenian women who had survived the initial deportation. In fact, in his entries dated May 27, 1916, Bogharian outlines the spiritual breakdown that Armenian women confronted. Those residing around Hama, Homs and Salamiyya were forced to work as servants, mistresses and prostitutes.Footnote 65 Bogharian defines these conditions as “one of the heaviest blows Turks inflicted on us.”Footnote 66

Forced Conversion

Forced conversion was one answer that the persecuted, including the Bogharian family, considered. The conspiracy to eradicate the Armenian population and all traces of it from Ottoman society that the Young Turks had envisaged during World War I comprised deportation, genocide, and forced assimilation. The mass murders almost entirely targeted Armenian men, whereas Armenian women and children predominantly faced deportations and forced assimilation through relocation with Muslim families.Footnote 67 The genocidal process initially sought to decimate the social fabric of Armenian society and subsequently implemented a campaign of deportations that physically devastated the Armenians and, consequently, became a way to identify potential Armenian individuals suitable for resettlement in Muslim households. The forced assimilation of the surviving Armenians into the Muslim population comprised the forcible conversion of these Armenians, most of whom were women and children, to Islam. Ironically, the Muslim families who accepted Armenians into their homes as part of this forced conversion policy largely coordinated with the Ottoman state to assist in its efforts to eliminate the Armenian population.

Conversion has been viewed as a practice that “varied from one region to another at the discretion of local administrators and that was primarily motivated by Muslim fanaticism.”Footnote 68 Most deportees considered it a breach of moral and social codes, as well as an infraction of their religious identity; nonetheless, to convert and live inconspicuously in Muslim communities remained their most viable option for survival. Demands for the conversion of Armenians, who had come to realize that deportation equaled death, began in June 1915.Footnote 69 On July 1, 1915, it was prohibited, though reinstated four months later, albeit with certain restrictions. “It is understood that some of the Armenians being expelled pledged to convert en masse or individually, and in this fashion worked to secure the way for them to remain in their native lands,” observed Talat Pasha in a cable to provincial administrators.Footnote 70 The reinstatement was announced on November 4, 1915, through a “secret” order sent to all provinces and provincial districts as well as settlement areas in present-day Syria and Iraq. On November 5, 1915, the government issued a regulation establishing the rules for conversion. Accordingly, the only requests to be accepted were those presented by Armenians who had been permitted to stay after having been subjected to a stringent security vetting.Footnote 71

Conversion was not a stable process; it was initiated, ceased, and restarted. Thus, there was no all-encompassing, definitive regulation or piece of legislation. Execution and implementation of the policy by the Ministry of Interior and relevant Ottoman bureaucracy was inconsistent. The policies of religious conversion underwent a significant alteration in the spring of 1916. Armenians who remained in various provinces and districts of Anatolia and those who had been allowed to settle in Syria were forced to choose between Islam and deportation to Deir ez-Zor.Footnote 72 “At the end of February and the beginning of March 1916, nearly all of the Armenians in the labor battalion of Aleppo, urged upon partly with success, were converted to Islam,” wrote Consul Rössler.Footnote 73 A similar report came from Aleppo:

According to mutually corroborating news from Hama, Homs, Damascus, and other places, in the last weeks, those sent away en masse [the Armenians] were pressed to convert to Islam through the threat of further deportations. This [conversion process] took place in a purely bureaucratic fashion: Applying, and then changing of name.Footnote 74

American consul Jackson of Aleppo attested that “at Hama, Homs, Marash, etc., thousands have been forced to become Mohammedans.”Footnote 75 The Ottoman government’s assimilationist policy continued to be implemented in the summer of 1916, a year after the main deportations had started. The case of Krikor Bogharian is a prime example. His case shows the continued genocidal policy of the Ottoman government a year after its emergence. His diary illustrates in detail the organized nature of the assimilations, with Ottoman bureaucracy, police, judiciary, and clergy being both directly involved and indirectly complicit in the approval of forced marriage, conversion, and adoption, in keeping official records of these acts, and in compiling lists of those who were to be deported, adopted, or converted.Footnote 76

According to his diary, on June 23, a proposal was made to convert Armenians from Adana who settled in Hama.Footnote 77 He writes that following the physical, economic and cultural destruction of Armenians, this was “a new evil” forced upon them. Actually, forced conversion was already occurring in Aintab in May 1916.Footnote 78 As of late July 1916, religious converts in Salamiyya began to increase in number, as Ali Kemal Bey insisted that Armenian deportees change their religion to Islam. In Hama in August 1916, Armenian deportees were pressured to convert en masse, to which they acceded. In Hama and Salamiyya in September 1916, there were reports of forcible conversions, targeting many prominent individuals from Aintab and a number of alumni of Central Turkey College.Footnote 79

Reports of local attempts to force the remaining Christians to “choose” Islamization, led to a brief but critical reaction from the Armenians. The alternative was deportation, the meaning of which was widely understood by this point. Bogharian’s entries detailed that conversions occurred in two ways. In the first option, the head of a household appealed to the kadı to officially convert and he then announced in the town center that he had embraced Islam, at which point he received a Muslim name.Footnote 80 Following the conversion of the other family members, they too were publicly given new names. Alternatively, the head of a household applied to the conversion office along with the names of his family members, they would receive new Muslim names and were reregistered as such in the register’s office with a note stating that they had converted to Islam.Footnote 81

Krikor Bogharian and his family chose the second option. Without taking his mother, sister, or brothers to the register’s office, he completed the process himself. After becoming a Muslim, he changed his name to Şahap (his mother changed her name to Meryem) and had this name added to his registry, at which time it was noted at the register office that he and his family had converted.Footnote 82 By August 1916, conversions in Salamiyya began to increase. Bogharian participated in this process—both by converting to Islam and by assuming an official duty. In his entry dated August 16, he remarks that he had begun working as a clerk in the “conversion bureau,” which maintained records of conversions to Islam. He writes in his diary that people who accepted conversion, including himself, did so in order to survive. He recorded that 250 families comprised of 1250 people converted to Islam in Hama on August 24, under watch of a special official sent from Hama to monitor the proceedings.Footnote 83 Among the registered families were Aintab Armenians such as the families Sulahian, Babikian, Levonian, and Yegavian. On August 28, the total number of families who had converted to Islam increased to 500.Footnote 84

Bogharian writes that the local people thought these conversions were only for show, a means of placating the authorities. The number of people who came from nearby villages to convert also increased, as people were living in fear and did not want to be deprived of their food rations, which were guaranteed to those who converted. On August 29, the number of Armenian families who became Muslim reached 750. Among these were Protestant families such as the Jebejians and Barsumians.

Around this time, Muslim men started to marry converted Armenian girls. As one can discern from Bogharian’s diary entries, the deportations were not only intended to exterminate every Armenian in the Ottoman Empire but also to allow a large number of individuals to be absorbed as Muslims, although Armenian converts were investigated and their movements controlled as late as 1918.Footnote 85 In April of that year, all provinces and districts were required to prepare a detailed list of Armenian converts, including such information as their names, the date and manner of their conversion, the names of family members, and their occupations.Footnote 86 Through this, the Interior Minister sought to measure the loyalty of the converts to the state.

Conclusion

Bogharian ended his diary on December 19, 1916. In early December 1916, he started to work at two jobs in Salamiyya thanks to Cevad Effendi, the director of Arazi Mülkiye (Land Property) who helped him find a job there as a clerk assistant. From morning until noon, he worked at the Land Property clerk’s office and from noon until the evening he clerked as a financial agent.Footnote 87 In this way, he took care of his family. Since he was working very hard, he may have stopped keeping his diary. In October 1918, the Ottoman Army retreated from Damascus, Homs and Hama. On October 30, the Mudros Armistice was signed. After the armistice, he worked as an assistant clerk for Armenian National Community founded, under the presidency of Der Nerses Tavukjian, in Hama on December 30, 1918.Footnote 88 In 1919, Bogharian and his family finally returned to Aintab, where the occupying Allied forces had established their authority.Footnote 89

The Bilad al-Sham region saw a wave of Armenian deportees numbering in the tens of thousands and subsequently had the most sizeable population of Armenian genocide survivors. Exacerbating the brutal conditions that the deported Armenians faced were the rampant famine, disease, and death, further constricting the lives of the genocide survivors and forcing them to acclimate to a harsh environment fraught with challenges and struggles. Krikor Bogharian’s diary represents a unique primary source offering valuable insights into the experiences of the Armenian genocide victims between 1915 and 1918. Although the nature of his personal writings may produce the greatest impact on historiographical research into this locality, the text as a whole delivers a piece of the puzzle in explaining how and why atrocities such as the Armenian genocide have transpired.