//Ed. note: Eyüb Sabri Bey describes 'eye
operations' performed on Turkish POWs
by Armenian doctors at the English prison
camp hospital at Zeitoun-Heliopolis.//
Armenian
Doctors and ‘Eye Operations’
Here I will talk a bit about the Armenian doctors I
saw in Egypt and I
cannot help but refer to them with this label: Eye
Cutters. Yes, these
low fellows are of a
different sort, creatures having very different
hearts because the heinous
crimes they committed could never be done
by anyone with a human heart. But they did it in Egypt’s Abbasiye
Hospital
and in the prison camp but it is beyond my ken to be able to
describe and
depict this horrific scene. All I can do
is relate what I
saw with my own eyes. Even the atrocities of the Inquisition and the
Middle Ages cannot be
compared to the crimes and treachery
perpetrated against Turkish prisoners in
Abbasiye Hospital.
I think that the only
ones who did this dastardly deed were the
Armenian doctors. But they were given great leeway in their
duties
and permitted to commit these abominable acts against our poor,
innocent children of the homeland, our soldiers.
I’m talking about
cutting out their eyes amid their screams. Who bears responsibility
for these
crimes? Besides the cutters themselves,
naturally, the entire
English government bears responsibility.
The Armenian
doctors at Abbasiye Hospital, with a metal stylus in
hand and their sleeves
rolled up to their elbows, performed operations
from morning till evening on
Turkish soldiers, cutting out their eyes.
Based on the statements of many of our Egyptian co-religionists and
all
of the prisoners, these eye operations increased in frequency just
before the
‘Mütareke’ and especially afterwards. In
other words,
together with the haughtiness that accompanied the English victory
in
the Great War. While we were there this atrocity was continuing in all
its
violence, as we witnessed.
Mustafa Kemal Paşa, in Anatolia, became aware
of this horrific tragedy
from Egyptian
newspapers. At that time the Egyptian
royalists were
violently rebelling against the English so the eye operations
gradually
diminished in frequency until one day there were suddenly no more
‘requests’ for eye operations. However,
up until that time at least 2,000
of our soldiers lost both eyes, some one eye
and many others had their
arms and their legs cut off.
The sole factor enabling the Armenians in this
situation was that these
accursed men were the doctors on duty in the
camps. After working at
hard labor all
day in the hot sand and under the burning sun, our prisoners
suffered eye
problems and their only recourse was to appeal to the
doctors on duty, who,
without applying any medicine, would refer the
prisoners to the hospital, like a
wolf bringing prey to his den. Any
resistance by the prisoner was not
tolerated and after ten days at the
hospital they would return without their
eyes.
It was impossible to look at these victims and not
feel anguish, whether
in the hospital or in the camp. Thirty or forty prisoners in the hospital
courtyard would hold on to each other’s jackets in order to get to the
lavatory
to relieve themselves. The same system
was applied for the
meal line and during hard labor in the sand all day
long. The English,
self-proclaimed
guardians of civilization, saw all of this but felt no pity
and never deigned
to inquire about the victims’ well-being.
“O God, is this the harbinger of judgment day?
A sign of mankind’s destruction?
The unrestrained greed of avaricious men
Will there be no regret for these acts?
The tyrants will be named
For these worldwide atrocities
These incomprehensible crimes
What is this ignorance of mankind?”
This important keepsake was written by the great
literary genius
Abdülhak Hâmid Bey and I cannot help but apply it here to the
English
for these vicious crimes and their greedy pursuit of money and
glory.
But what’s the use! Damn
captivity! Death is better and more honorable
that such a life of shame. For a Turk, death is preferable to
captivity.
Hey Turk, for you to live in
bondage is abasement. Die, rather than be
a prisoner!
Ödemişli Ali Dayı
This poor elderly fellow’s cries and moans made me
feel so sorry for him.
One day I
encountered him in Camp 11. I helped him get to the barracks.
He explained to me that he was summoned to
the Ottoman Army when he
was 50-years-old.
He had a small perfume shop across from the municipal
building in
Ödemiş, near Izmir. To sustain his
family while he was at the
front, he sold the shop. After fighting on many fronts he was taken
prisoner. When he arrived in Egypt, one
of his eyes was bothering him
so, without suspecting anything, he asked an
Armenian doctor to treat it.
The doctor sent him to the hospital, despite his protestations, and the next
day he found himself in that butcher shop of an operation room, where
his right eye was taken out. The trauma of it all made him
lose the sight
in his other eye, as well.
I heard similar stories from five or six of our
young soldiers in Camp
11:
Mehmet, son of Şaban, from Urul village in Antep;
Mehmet from Küçük
Nacar village in Maraş; Hüseyin Onbaşı, a watchman in Konya’s
Beyşehir
town; Hasan, son of Hacı, from Cedid village of Çay township in
Bolvadin
town, Afyonkarahisar subdivision; Manastırlı Rıza; and Erzurumlu
Süleyman.
They all told me of their horrific experiences. Urullu Mehmet, Hüseyin
Onbaşı and the others
said that “when they came to the camp barracks to
examine the prisoners, they
separated us out because of our bloodshot eyes
and sent us to Abbasiye
Hospital, although none of us had eye complaints.
They put medicine in our eyes that made them
bleed, prompting immediate
operations and the removal of our eyes. We screamed against it, but in vain.
During the operation the Armenian doctors
said ‘how many Armenians did
you kill in your hometown? This treatment you are undergoing is your
punishment.’ They said this and similar
poisonous words and insults while
taking our eyes out, crushing and wounding
our hearts in the process.”
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