Next,
Taşcızâde Hoca Abdullah Efendi was called in to see the
General. It was understood that the charges against us
all were part
of a ready-made plan. The
English soldiers surrounding us began to
prepare the vehicles so we understood
that we would be going
somewhere, although we did not know the
destination. In any event,
we wanted to
see our families before leaving, get some money and
clothes and take care of
our business and personal affairs but it was
not to be – we were all searched
and everything in our pockets, our
documents and photographs were taken from
us, as we were loaded
into the vehicles.
We were, however, allowed to write notes to our
families. Yet, we
were amazed by this
poor treatment, not fit for murderers, but despite
our pleas, the automobiles
departed. The governor, having done his
‘duty’ by delivering us to the English, returned to his office. One scene
I will never forget is the sight of
Besim Bey’s son at the door, head
bowed, watching his father being taken
away. Any father-son
conversation was
forbidden and the sad boy was chased from the
doorway.
There were vehicles with mounted machines guns in
front and behind us.
A crowd of
Armenians had gathered in front of the American College
and they hurled insults
at us, not to mention stones. The person
egging
them on most ardently was the fellow in a captain’s uniform at the
General’s side who did the translating while we were being questioned.
All his actions betrayed the enmity for Turks and Moslems that he
could not refrain from exhibiting there. I
later learned that he was Dr.
Trobilich, who had been at the American College
for some time as an
inspector. He was
fluent in Turkish and an ill-willed, anti-Turkish
missionary.
When it comes to Merrill, I am at a loss to describe
him. This vengeful
missionary had been
the director of the American College for thirty
years and he knew all the local
notables, who treated him with great
respect. Merrill was very familiar with the Ottoman provincial officials
and
could enter their offices any time, whether it was before the Great
War or
during it. He was treated like a local
master teacher and catered
to by both the officials and the populace.
Yet, this traitor, who in thirty years was never
disrespected or treated
badly by the Moslems, became a virulent enemy of
Moslems,
especially when the English entered Antep, finally dropping his
mask.
Merrill, who was of English
heritage, was forever preaching about
rights and justice but suddenly abandoned
both. He began to openly
facilitate the communications between Aleppo and Antep of the
Armenian committees and he
played a key role vis-a-vis the English
in the implementation of the Armenian intrigues against the local
Moslems.
During the transportation of the Armenians, the
honorable people of
Antep who had done their duty as citizens toward the
Armenians, who
had withheld nothing to help them and who, in fact, had, as the
Armenians departed, refused to stoop to the double-dealing and
provocations the
Armenians did to one another and, quite the opposite,
took pity on them and
showed love for them, even enabling most of
them to avoid exile. Yet Merrill openly egged-on the English to do
their worst toward the people of Antep.
Because by making his college
the headquarters of the English and
becoming their man in Antep,
Merrill completely fulfilled the facilitation of
these accursed aims of his.
Merrill brought into the English headquarters at the
American College
the most common roughnecks, like wall painters, tinsmiths and
porters,
who supposedly wanted to be ‘komitacı’ (revolutionaries) and die for
the cause, but who also wanted to exact vengeance on the Turks. He
introduced these tramps to the English as
extremely brave fighters of
the ‘committee’ and presented Armenian prostitutes,
henceforth
wearing modest clothes, as fine ladies, duping the English in these
and
other ways to get what he wanted.
As can be seen from the events thus far related,
when the English
entered Antep, Governor
Celâl Bey directed them straight to the
American College for use as their
headquarters. There, Principal
Merrill
and Dr. Trobilich immediately steered the English toward
vindictiveness and
hatred of the local populace, characterizing all of
Antep’s Moslems as enemies
of the Armenians.
I would have wanted to inform everyone more
explicitly about that
ungrateful missionary Merrill and my opinion of the ideas and
thoughts he had about the
Turks. These words won’t fit in my
memoir
so I will leave the telling to the experts and to those who witnessed
these truths with me. But these last
actions by both Merrill and his
cohort Trobilich, and the wrongheaded notions
about English
civilization and justice, were the things that laid the
groundwork for
the calamities the nation experienced. I am certain that the people of
Antep will
never forget the mistakes made because of the incompetence
and lethergy that
occurred at the beginning of the occupation as the
result of these mistaken
ideas and beliefs.
//END of PART THREE//
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