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Updated: June 2, 2025
Diarbekr is a town of 35,000 inhabitants, whose importance arises from its being the meeting point of the roads from the Mediterranean via Aleppo and Damascus from the Black Sea via Amasia-Kharput, and Erzerum and from the Persian Gulf via Bagdad. Ras-el-Ain, the present railhead of the Bagdad railway, is seventy miles south.
The Turkish plan of campaign for the defense of Erzerum, according to official Russian sources, was as follows: The Third Army Corps, which had been ordered up to replace the losses in the Caucasus front of the previous nine months, was moved out of Erzerum and took up a position between that town and the Russian front.
Trebizond is an ancient seaport of great commercial importance, due chiefly to the fact that it controls the point where the principal trade route from Persia and central Asia to Europe, over Armenia and by way of Bayezid and Erzerum, descends to the sea. It has been the dream of Russia for centuries to put her hands forever upon this important "window on the Black Sea."
The triple Russian thrust at Erzerum was made from Olty, which had been captured as far back as August 3, 1915, along the Kars-Erzerum road by way of Sarikamish, the scene of the great Turkish defeat of the early days of the war, and from Melazghert and Khynysskala.
Erzerum was undoubtedly one of the strongest positions in the Turkish Empire, although the experience of the war had tended to detract from previous confidence in the strength of old-style concrete forts when attacked by concentrated big-gun bombardment. Opinions differ on the question of whether or not the Erzerum armament had been maintained up to a modern standard.
The headwaters of this river are located less than twenty-five miles northeast of Erzingan, and up its valley a new Russian offensive against Erzingan was started as soon as the new strength of the Turkish defensive along the direct route from Erzerum made itself felt.
It is comparatively easy, then, to imagine some of the difficulties that confronted the Turkish command. From Erzerum to the nearest railhead is something like 200 miles. A blinding snowstorm was raging and the temperature was hovering around 25 degrees below zero.
Their reappearance, now so close to the road between Bitlis and Erzerum, presented a serious menace both to the center and to the left wing of Grand Duke Nicholas's forces, for if the Turkish troops were in large enough force, the Russians were in danger of having their center and left wing separated.
The Governors of Trebizond and Erzerum were so good as to provide me with an escort of six armed troopers on sturdy horses. In front rides a Turkish soldier on a piebald horse, carrying his carbine in a sling over his back, his sabre and dagger hanging at his side, and wearing a red fez with a white pagri wound round it as a protection from sun and wind.
At the same time it was also announced that fighting had occurred northwest of Mush. The Turkish forces involved in this fighting must have been recent reenforcements, because Mush is sixty-five miles northwest of Bitlis, the occupation of which took place about four weeks previously, at which time the region between Erzerum and Bitlis undoubtedly had been cleared of Turkish soldiers.
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