offensive on 15 May, creating a threat of conquest for all of Eastern Armenia. At this point, only a small area of Armenian territory remained unconquered by the Turks, and into that small area, hundreds of thousands of Armenian refugees fled. It seemed like it was only a matter of time until that too would be overrun. In order to break into Eastern Armenia, the Turkish Military Command made a regrouping of its troops. A special detachment commanded by Yakub Shevki Pasha was formed in Kars from subdivisions of the 1st Caucasian Army Corps (under the command of Major-General Kazim Karabekir Pasha) and the 2nd Caucasian Army Corps of the Third Army (under the command of Major-General Yakub Shevki Pasha). Within the newly-formed detachment, the 36th Division (under the command of Colonel Pirselimoğlu Hamdi Bey) and the 9th Division (under the command of Colonel Rüştü Paşa) of the 1st Caucasian Army Corps, as well as the 11th Division (under the command of Colonel Cavit Erdel) and the 5th Division (under the command of Colonel Mürsel Pasha) of the 2nd Caucasian Army Corps were to operate against the Armenian forces. Besides the detachment in question, also participating in combat operations in the course of the invasion of Eastern Armenia was the 12th Division of the 4th Army Corps of the Second Army, which supervised Surmali mountain passes on the eve of the Battle of Sardarapat and had a mission to invade Igdir Province. To be able to resist the attack, commander of the Armenian Corps, commander-in-chief of the Armenian Armed Forces Tovmas Nazarbekian decided to safeguard the strategic roads to Yerevan and Tiflis. A part of the Armenian troops that had left Alexandropol, including some units of the 1st Division of the Armenian Corps, as well as several units within the Special Armenian Detachment, retreated towards the Ararat Plain. Here under the general command of Movses Silikyan, the Detachment of Yerevan of the Armenian Armed Forces was created with a task to thwart the Turkish attack on Yerevan. Yerevan on the eve of the battle The invasion of the Turkish army put the Armenian political leadership in both Tiflis and Yerevan into a difficult situation. On 19 May, after invading Surmali, Turkish General Halil Kut (the uncle of Enver Pasha) declared in Batumi that "the Armenians have been defeated and must be obeyed." On the other hand, the Armenian delegation represented