File No. 867.4016/283
The Chargé in Turkey (Philip) to the Secretary of State
[Received May 26, 8.15 a. m.]
1821. Your 2484, May 9. Turkish authorities appear to be pursuing policy of Turkifying Syria and adjacent Arabic-speaking provinces. Many notables both Christian and Moslem are stated to have been arrested, imprisoned, and executed. The Moslem senator, Abdul Hamid Zohration, was suddenly arrested in Constantinople some weeks since and sent to Damascus for trial and condemned to death, and many of the richest families of Damascus and the Lebanon have been deported, their properties being confiscated. I am informed by a reliable person just arrived from Syria that about 5,000 families of that region have been exiled and scattered among Turks in Asia Minor, and that the Turkish plan is evidently to scatter in this way probably 250,000 families whose places would be taken by Turks. I understand that Turks put forward as ostensible reason for this action that Syrians and other Arabs subjected to this treatment were disloyal to the Turkish Government, that they held meetings in Egypt and elsewhere to consider and decide steps to be taken for the separation of Syria from the Ottoman Empire. Incriminating evidence is stated to have been found in French consular archives against persons in Beirut and elsewhere who have been arrested or sentenced. I understand that the treatment of the people deported has been up to the present much more humane than that to which the Armenians have been subjected. Many are known to have been comfortably transported at Government expense as far as Angora, being given to understand that land will be allotted to them equal in extent to that left behind, etc.