Administration
The easternmost sancak of the Ottoman Empire included the five kazas Beyazıt (Bayazet; Armenian: Payazat), Diyadin, Karakilise, Eleşkirt (Armenian: Alashkert), and Ayntap (Armenian: Aynt’ap’).
Population
According to the census carried out in 1914, a total of 13,412 Ottoman Armenians, 11,972 of whom were Armenian Apostolic, 1,411 Catholics, and 29 Protestants, lived in the sancak of Beyazıt. Of these, more than 2,000 Armenians lived in the homonymous administrative seat Beyazıt, which had a total population of 7,000. In the Abdigor neighborhood, where the Surb Karapet and Surb Vardan Churches were located in the center of Beyazıt town, there were two Armenian schools and an Armenian orphanage.
Arzap village (pop. 1,200) boasted two churches, four monasteries and two schools, the village of Mosun, with a population of close to 800, a church, two monasteries and two schools; Korum (pop. of 375) a church, and Meryemana village, where the majority of the population were Kurds and where about 40 Armenians lived, were the Armenian populated villages of the central district Beyazıt.
Around 150 Armenians, who had also a church called Surb Astvatsatsin, lived in the center of Diyadin, another town and kaza of the Beyazıt sancak. The number of Armenians living in the villages of Tavla, Seydo, Curcan, Karapazar, Üçkilise, Kumlubacak and Mirzakhan in the kaza of Diyadin was approximately 1,500. In the center of Karakilise (later named Karaköse), half of the population of 4,500 consisted of Armenians. There were two Armenian schools in that town, one for girls and one for boys. The villages of Yerenos, Çamırlı, Kazi, Kıhıdır, Mengeser, Mezire, Taşlıçay, Aşkhan, Yeritsu, Yoncalu and Ziro were the Armenian populated villages in the Karakilise district.
At the same time, around 1,400 Armenians lived in Toprakkale, which was the administrative seat of the Eleşkirt district. In the town where the Surb Astvatsatsin Church and the Surb Kirakos Monastery were located, there was also a school called Surb Astvatsatsin. Other important villages of the Eleşkirt district where Ottoman Armenians lived were Amad, Khomsur, Koşek, Molla Süleyman, Yeritsuküğ, Zeydgan, and Kayabek. A small Armenian community lived in Tutak, located in the center of the Ayntab kaza.
The largest Armenian settlement of that kaza was Patnos, which had another church called Surb Astvatsatsin and an Armenian population of about 400. Araboli, Asmar, Gharğalek, Melan, Mussig, Goşk, Terek, Camalverdi, Garaköy and Partav were the main Armenian populated villages of the Ayntab kaza.
Excerpted from: Orlando Calumeno, Number: 764, 26 November 2010. http://akunq.net/en/?p=3109&cpage=1#comment-116219
According to Raymond Kévorkian, basing on the statistics of the Armenian Patriarchate of Constantinople, there lived 24,627 Armenians in the sancak of Beyazıt: 4,884 in the kaza of Beyazıt, 1,649 in the kaza of Diyadin, 8,180 in the kaza of Karakilise and 9,914 in the kaza of Eleşkirt/Alashkert/Toprakkale.[1] Most escaped to the Russian controlled Caucasus.
The Human Balance
„In February 1916, when the Russian army took the control of the better part of the vilayet of Erzurum, there remained only a few dozen Armenian craftsmen and doctors, together with 200 or 300 survivors, most of whom found refuge in the mountains of Dersim. (…) 33,000 people from the vilayet, almost all of them from the sancak of Bayazid, had fled to the Caucasus, and somewhat over 5,000 women and children had survived in the places to which they were deported: Mosul (1,600), Urfa (300) and Aleppo (1,000), with another 2,200 scattered through Syria and Mesopotamia. Virtually the whole of the surviving male population consisted of 120 men.”[2]