seven or eight days to organize the retreat, it would have been possible to direct the people to Erivan without the loss of a single life. On 29 September 1915, the Ottoman Army left the city of Van after staying for roughly one month. The Ottoman retreat was forced following defeats suffered by their armies in other regions of the Caucasus front, and in part because of the relative isolation during the World War I era of Van from Anatolian Turkey. Some of the Armenian residents who escaped to Transcaucasia returned. On 19 January 1916, the Turkish defeat at the Battle of Koprukoy saw Russian forces advance once again towards Erzurum, a city laying halfway between Lake Van and the Black Sea. The Province of Van was under the Administration of Western Armenia until 1918. The conflicts between 1916 and 1918 were shifted to the west, to the north-west at the battle of Mush, and to the south-west at the battle of Bitlis of the Van Province. The final evacuation, April 1918 The Russian Revolution of 1917 changed the situation in the region again. The Russian armies began to disintegrate. Van was completely cut off from the Allies. The British Army did not move very far beyond Baghdad in the Mesopotamian campaign. Armenians of Van attempted to hold their ground and were joined in the defense by Assyrians. On 3 March 1918, the Grand vizier Talat Pasha signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with the Russian SFSR. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk stipulated that the border be pulled back to prewar levels and the cities of Batum, Kars, and Ardahan to be transferred to Ottoman Empire. Early in 1918 the Ottoman 3rd Army moved to an offensive against Armenians. Vehib Pasha executed the offensive in three wings. On the right wing, Van province was assigned to IV Corps. IV Corps assignment was to extend to Beyazit. In April 1918, Armenians of Van resisted in Van one more time. On 4 April, the city of Van started changing hands several times. The Ottoman Army again controlled of city of Van by 6 April, followed by Beyazit on 14 April. Armenians of Van were eventually forced to evacuate and withdraw from the province of Van. Armenians of Van retreated eastward toward Persian Azerbaijan. They made a stand near Dilman. They repulsed the Ottomans once there, at the Battle of Dilman (1918), but, on being