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Historical background: After the death of Sultan Abdul-Hamid in 1909, the Ottoman Empire saw an upsurge of political activity by a panoply of reformist Turkish parties and political and revolutionary organizations. The First Balkan War weakened the empire further when former subject states successfully revolted. In a coup d'etat in January 1913, the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), also known as the "Young Turks," took advantage of the political confusion among the states of the empire and seized power of the Ottoman Empire. Their goal was to obliterate the traditional Ottoman focus of multi-ethnic and multi-religious society, and focus instead on Turkish nationalism. This made many other religious and ethnic groups uneasy - including the Armenian Christians.<ref>http://www.armenian-genocide.org/young_turks.html</ref><ref>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Turk</ref>
The January 1917 issue of The King's Business printed a six-page article entitled "The Mission at Van - an Armenian Tragedy" taken from the journals of Elizabeth H. Ussher, a survivor of the "terrifying experiences."<ref>http://www2.biola.edu/kingsbusiness/view/page/?issue=1&volume=8&page=26</ref> (And a leader of the "philanthropic lace industry"? Her husband was Dr. Clarence D. Ussher, in charge of the hospital and medical work.)
Ussher describes Van as "one of the most beautiful cities of Asiatic Turkey – a city of gardens and vineyards situated on Lake Van in the center of a plateau bordered by magnificent mountains." Fifty thousand people, mostly Armenians, called the city in this picturesque and fertile valley home. Van was dominated by Castle Rock, with the city's ancient history carved on the cliffs in cuneiform, and famous for "The Gardens," a four-mile-by-two-mile stretch just outside the walls where every house stood in the midst of a garden or vineyard.
Early in the 1900's, this serene community sat like a saucepan inside a double-boiler of the Ottoman Empire. Surrounded by the boiling tumult of a thinly-veiled insurgency, it was only a matter of time before Van would heat up as well.
"The Armenians were progressive and ambitious..." Ussher says, "and because of their numerical strength and the proximity of Russia, the revolutionary party grew to be a force to be reckoned with." Three noted leaders were Vreymyan, a member of the Ottoman Parliament; Ishkan, a skilled military tactician; and Aram.
The American Mission Compound – made of a church, a hospital, a dispensary, two large and two small school buildings, a lace school, and four missionary houses – sat on a slight rise in the southeast of the Garden. The Turkish barracks and two military garrisons sat quite near to the mission.
"During the mobilization of the fall and winter the Armenians had been ruthlessly plundered, under the name of 'requisitioning;' rich men were ruined and the poor stripped. Armenian soldiers in the Turkish Army were neglected, half starved, digging trenches and doing the menial work; but the worst of all they were deprived of their arms, and thus left at the mercy of their fanatical, age-long enemies-their Moslem fellow-soldiers." No wonder that those who had a bit of money paid a tax for exemption from military duty, and, of the most who could not, some escaped. "We felt a day of reckoning would soon come-a collision between those opposing forces, or a holy war."
In early spring, "trouble broke our between Armenians and Turks in the Shadakh region" and Governor Jevdet Bey (the brother-in-law of Minister of War Enver Pasha) promised safe passage for Ishkan and three other revolutionists to meet as peace commissioners.
On Friday, April 16, 1915, the four travelers were treacherously double-crossed by Bey and murdered.
Next, Bey summoned Vreyman for a consultation, arrested him, and sent him to Constantinople under guard. He demanded another 3,000 soldiers from the community at Van – and refused to accept the payment of exemption taxes. Dr. Ussher and missionary school director Mr. Yarrow met with Bey and tried to mollify him, but he demanded that he "must be obeyed" and promised to put down this "rebellion" at all costs.
"The fact cannot be too strongly emphasized that there was no 'rebellion,'" Ussher's journal reads. "The revolutionists meant to keep the peace....but Turkish entrenchments had been secretly drawn around the Armenian quarter of the Gardens."
The siege began on Tuesday, April 20. At 6 a.m. Turkish soldiers unsuccessfully tried to abduct a village woman. Two Armenians approached the soldiers to ask the Turks why they tried to seize the woman. The Turkish soldiers fired on and killed the Armenians. Upon this, the Turkish entrenchments opened fire. Steady rifle and cannon fire continued all day and the walled city of Van was now cut off from communication with The Gardens. The evening sky lit up with burning houses.
"All the Armenians in the Gardens, nearly 30,000, were now gathered into a district about a mile square.
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