Armenian genocide

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to navigation Jump to search
Armenian genocide
Part of World War I

Column of Armenian deportees guarded by gendarmes in Harput Vilayet

Location Ottoman Empire
Date 1915–1917[1][2]
Target Ottoman Armenians
Attack type Genocide, death march, forced Islamization
Deaths 600,000–1.5 million[3]
Perpetrators Committee of Union and Progress
Trials Ottoman Special Military Tribunal

The Armenian genocide[a] was the systematic destruction of the Armenian people and identity
in the Ottoman Empire during World War I. Spearheaded by the ruling Committee of Union and
Progress (CUP), it was implemented primarily through the mass murder of around one million
Armenians during death marches to the Syrian Desert and the forced Islamization of Armenian
women and children.
Before World War I, Armenians occupied a protected, but subordinate, place in Ottoman society.
Large-scale massacres of Armenians occurred in the 1890s and 1909. The Ottoman Empire
suffered a series of military defeats and territorial losses—especially the 1912–1913 Balkan
Wars—leading to fear among CUP leaders that the Armenians, whose homeland in the eastern
provinces was viewed as the heartland of the Turkish nation, would seek independence. During
their invasion of Russian and Persian territory in 1914, Ottoman paramilitaries massacred local
Armenians. Ottoman leaders took isolated indications of Armenian resistance as evidence of a
widespread rebellion, though no such rebellion existed. Mass deportation was intended to
permanently forestall the possibility of Armenian autonomy or independence.

On 24 April 1915, the Ottoman authorities arrested and deported hundreds of Armenian
intellectuals and leaders from Constantinople. At the orders of Talaat Pasha, an estimated
800,000 to 1.5 million Armenian women, children, and elderly or infirm people were sent on
death marches to the Syrian Desert in 1915 and 1916. Driven forward by paramilitary escorts
(many of whom were Kurds), the deportees were deprived of food and water and subjected to
robbery, rape, and massacres. In the Syrian Desert, the survivors were dispersed into
concentration camps. In 1916, another wave of massacres was ordered, leaving about 200,000
deportees alive by the end of the year. Around 100,000 to 200,000 Armenian women and
children were forcibly converted to Islam and integrated into Muslim households. Massacres and
ethnic cleansing of Armenian survivors were carried out by the Turkish nationalist movement
during the Turkish War of Independence after World War I.

The Armenian genocide resulted in the destruction of more than two millennia of Armenian
civilization. Together with the mass murder and expulsion of Syriac and Greek Orthodox
Christians, it enabled the creation of an ethnonational Turkish state. The Turkish government
maintains that the deportation of Armenians was a legitimate action that cannot be described as
genocide. As of 2022, 31 countries have recognized the events as genocide, as do the vast
majority of historians.

Contents
• 1 Background
o 1.1 Armenians in the Ottoman Empire
o 1.2 Land conflict and reforms
o 1.3 Young Turk Revolution
o 1.4 Balkan Wars
• 2 Ottoman entry into World War I
• 3 Onset of genocide
• 4 Systematic deportations
o 4.1 Aims
o 4.2 Administrative organization
o 4.3 Death marches
o 4.4 Islamization
o 4.5 Confiscation of property
• 5 Destination
• 6 International reaction
 • 7 Aftermath
o 7.1 End of World War I
o 7.2 Trials
o 7.3 Turkish War of Independence
• 8 Legacy
o 8.1 Turkey
o 8.2 Armenia and Azerbaijan
o 8.3 International recognition
o 8.4 Cultural depictions
o 8.5 Archives and historiography
• 9 References
o 9.1 Sources
• 10 External links

Background
Further information: Causes of the Armenian genocide

Armenians in the Ottoman Empire

Main article: Armenians in the Ottoman Empire

Armenian population map published in 1896

The presence of Armenians in Anatolia has been documented since the sixth century BCE, about
1,500 years before the arrival of Turkmens under the Seljuk dynasty.[4][5] The Kingdom of
Armenia adopted Christianity as its national religion in the fourth century CE, establishing the
Armenian Apostolic Church.[6] Following the end of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, two Islamic
empires—the Ottoman Empire and the Iranian Safavid Empire—contested Western Armenia,
which was permanently separated from Eastern Armenia (held by the Safavids) by the 1639
Treaty of Zuhab.[7] The Ottoman Empire was multiethnic and multireligious,[8] and its millet
system offered non-Muslims a subordinate but protected place in society.[9] Sharia law encoded
Islamic superiority but guaranteed property rights and freedom of worship to non-Muslims
(dhimmis) in exchange for a special tax.[10]

On the eve of World War I in 1914, around two million Armenians lived in Anatolia out of a
total population of 15–17.5 million.[11] According to the Armenian Patriarchate's estimates for
1913–1914, there were 2,925 Armenian towns and villages in the Ottoman Empire, of which
2,084 were in the Armenian highlands in the vilayets of Bitlis, Diyarbekir, Erzerum, Harput, and
Van.[12] Armenians were a minority in most places where they lived, alongside Turkish and
Kurdish Muslim and Greek Orthodox Christian neighbors.[11][12] According to the Patriarchate's
figure, 215,131 Armenians lived in urban areas, especially Constantinople, Smyrna, and Eastern
Thrace.[12] Although most Ottoman Armenians were peasant farmers, they were overrepresented
in commerce. As middleman minorities, despite the wealth of some Armenians, their overall
political power was low, making them especially vulnerable.[13]

Land conflict and reforms

"Looting of an Armenian village by the Kurds", 1898 or 1899

Armenians in the eastern provinces lived in semi-feudal conditions and commonly encountered
forced labor, illegal taxation, and unpunished crimes against them including robberies, murders,
and sexual assaults.[14][15] Beginning in 1839, the Ottoman government issued a series of reforms
to centralize power and equalize the status of Ottoman subjects regardless of religion. The
reforms to equalize the status of non-Muslims were strongly opposed by Islamic clergy and
Muslims in general, and remained mostly theoretical.[16][17][18] Because of the abolition of the
Kurdish emirates in the mid-nineteenth century, the Ottoman government began to directly tax
Armenian peasants who had previously paid taxes only to Kurdish landlords. The latter
continued to exact levies illegally.[19][20]

From the mid-nineteenth century, Armenians faced large-scale land usurpation as a consequence
of the sedentarization of Kurdish tribes and the arrival of Muslim refugees and immigrants
(mainly Circassians) following the Russo-Circassian War.[21][22][23] In 1876, when Sultan Abdul
Hamid II came to power, the state began to confiscate Armenian-owned land in the eastern
provinces and give it to Muslim immigrants as part of a systematic policy to reduce the
Armenian population of these areas. This policy lasted until World War I.[24][25] These conditions
led to a substantial decline in the population of the Armenian highlands; 300,000 Armenians left
the empire, and others moved to towns.[26][27] Some Armenians joined revolutionary political
parties, of which the most influential was the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF),
founded in 1890. These parties primarily sought reform within the empire and found only limited
support from Ottoman Armenians.[28]

Russia's decisive victory in the 1877–1878 war forced the Ottoman Empire to cede parts of
eastern Anatolia, the Balkans, and Cyprus.[29] Under international pressure at the 1878 Congress
of Berlin, the Ottoman government agreed to carry out reforms and guarantee the physical safety
of its Armenian subjects, but there was no enforcement mechanism;[30] conditions continued to
worsen.[31][32] The Congress of Berlin marked the emergence of the Armenian question in
international diplomacy as Armenians were for the first time used by the Great Powers to
interfere in Ottoman politics.[33] Although Armenians had been called the "loyal millet" in
contrast to Greeks and others who had previously challenged Ottoman rule, the authorities began
to perceive Armenians as a threat after 1878.[34] In 1891, Abdul Hamid created the Hamidiye
regiments from Kurdish tribes, allowing them to act with impunity against Armenians.[35][31]
From 1895 to 1896 the empire saw widespread massacres; at least 100,000 Armenians were
killed[36][37] primarily by Ottoman soldiers and mobs let loose by the authorities.[38] Many
Armenian villages were forcibly converted to Islam.[26] The Ottoman state bore ultimate
responsibility for the killings,[39][40] whose purpose was violently restoring the previous social
order in which Christians would unquestioningly accept Muslim supremacy,[41] and forcing
Armenians to emigrate, thereby decreasing their numbers.[42]

Young Turk Revolution

Main article: Young Turk Revolution

Abdul Hamid's despotism prompted the formation of an opposition movement, the Young Turks,
which sought to overthrow him and restore the 1876 Constitution of the Ottoman Empire, which
he had suspended in 1877.[43] One faction of the Young Turks was the secret and revolutionary
Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), based in Salonica, from which the charismatic
conspirator Mehmed Talaat (later Talaat Pasha) emerged as a leading member.[44] Although
skeptical of a growing, exclusionary Turkish nationalism in the Young Turk movement, the ARF
decided to ally with the CUP in December 1907.[45][46] In 1908, the CUP came to power in the
Young Turk Revolution, which began with a string of CUP assassinations of leading officials in
Macedonia.[47][48] Abdul Hamid was forced to reinstate the 1876 constitution and restore
parliament, which was celebrated by Ottomans of all ethnicities and religions.[49][50] Security
improved in parts of the eastern provinces after 1908 and the CUP took steps to reform the local
gendarmerie,[51] although tensions remained high.[52] Despite an agreement in the 1910 Salonika
Accord between the ARF and the CUP to reverse the land usurpation of the previous decades,
the CUP made no efforts to carry this out.[53][54]
The Armenian quarter of Adana after the 1909 massacres

In early 1909 an unsuccessful countercoup was launched by conservatives and some liberals who
opposed the CUP's increasingly repressive governance.[55] When news of the countercoup
reached Adana, armed Muslims attacked the Armenian quarter and Armenians returned fire.
Ottoman soldiers did not protect Armenians and instead armed the rioters.[56] Between 20,000
and 25,000 people, mostly Armenians, were killed in Adana and nearby towns.[57] Unlike the
1890s massacres, the events were not organized by the central government but instigated by local
officials, intellectuals, and Islamic clerics, including CUP supporters in Adana.[58] Although the
massacres went unpunished, the ARF continued to hope that reforms to improve security and
restore lands were forthcoming, until late 1912, when they broke with the CUP and appealed to
the European powers.[59][60][61] On 8 February 1914, the CUP reluctantly agreed to the 1914
Armenian reforms brokered by Germany. The reforms, never implemented due to World War I,
stipulated the appointment of two European inspectors for the entire Ottoman east and putting
the Hamidiye regiments in reserve. CUP leaders feared, if implemented, these reforms would
lead to partition and cited them as a reason for the elimination of the Armenian population in
1915.[62][63][64]

Balkan Wars

Muslim bandits parading with loot in Phocaea (modern-day Foça, Turkey) on 13 June 1914. In
the background are Greek refugees and burning buildings.

The 1912 First Balkan War resulted in the loss of almost all of the empire's European territory[65]
and the mass expulsion of Muslims from the Balkans.[66] Ottoman Muslim society was incensed
by the atrocities committed against Balkan Muslims, intensifying anti-Christian sentiment and
leading to a desire for revenge.[67][68] Blame for the loss was assigned to all Christians, including
the Ottoman Armenians, many of whom had fought on the Ottoman side.[69] The Balkan Wars
put an end to the Ottomanist movement for pluralism and coexistence;[70] instead, the CUP
turned to an increasingly radical Turkish nationalism to preserve the empire.[71] CUP leaders
such as Talaat and Enver Pasha came to blame non-Muslim population concentrations in
strategic areas for many of the empire's problems, concluding by mid-1914 that they were
internal tumors to be excised.[72] Of these, Ottoman Armenians were considered the most
dangerous, because CUP leaders feared that their homeland in Anatolia—claimed as the last
refuge of the Turkish nation—would break away from the empire as the Balkans had.[73][74][71]

In January 1913, the CUP launched another coup, installed a one-party state, and strictly
repressed all real or perceived internal enemies.[75][76] After the coup, the CUP shifted the
demography of border areas by resettling Balkan Muslim refugees while coercing Christians to
emigrate; immigrants were promised property that had belonged to Christians.[77] When parts of
Eastern Thrace were reoccupied by the Ottoman Empire during the Second Balkan War in mid-
1913, there was a campaign of looting and intimidation against Greeks and Armenians, forcing
many to emigrate.[78] Around 150,000 Greek Orthodox from the Aegean coast were forcibly
deported in May and June 1914 by Muslim bandits, who were secretly backed by the CUP and
sometimes joined by the regular army.[79][80][81] Historian Matthias Bjørnlund states that the
perceived success of the Greek deportations allowed CUP leaders to envision even more radical
policies "as yet another extension of a policy of social engineering through Turkification".[82]

Ottoman entry into World War I

"Revenge" (Ottoman Turkish: ‫ )اﻧﺘﻘﺎم‬map highlighting territory lost during and after the Balkan
Wars in black

A few days after the outbreak of World War I, the CUP concluded an alliance with Germany on
2 August 1914.[83] The same month, CUP representatives went to an ARF conference demanding
that, in the event of war with Russia, the ARF incite Russian Armenians to intervene on the
Ottoman side. Instead, the delegates resolved that Armenians should fight for the countries of
their citizenships.[84] During its war preparations, the Ottoman government recruited thousands
of prisoners to join the paramilitary Special Organization,[85] which initially focused on stirring
up revolts among Muslims behind Russian lines beginning before the empire officially entered
the war.[86] On 29 October 1914, the empire entered World War I on the side of the Central
Powers by launching a surprise attack on Russian ports in the Black Sea.[87] Many Russian
Armenians were enthusiastic about the war, but Ottoman Armenians were more ambivalent,
afraid that supporting Russia would bring retaliation. Organization of Armenian volunteer units
by Russian Armenians, later joined by some Ottoman Armenian deserters, further increased
Ottoman suspicions against their Armenian population.[88]

Wartime requisitions were often corrupt and arbitrary, and disproportionately targeted Greeks
and Armenians.[89] Armenian leaders urged young men to accept conscription into the army, but
many soldiers of all ethnicities and religions deserted due to difficult conditions and concern for
their families.[90] At least 10 percent of Ottoman Armenians were mobilized, leaving their
communities bereft of fighting-age men and therefore largely unable to organize armed
resistance to deportation in 1915.[91][92] During the Ottoman invasion of Russian and Persian
territory, the Special Organization massacred local Armenians and Syriac Christians.[93][94]
Beginning in November 1914, provincial governors of Van, Bitlis, and Erzerum sent many
telegrams to the central government pressing for more severe measures against the Armenians,
both regionally and throughout the empire.[95] These requests were endorsed by the central
government already before 1915.[96] Armenian civil servants were dismissed from their posts in
late 1914 and early 1915.[97] In February 1915, the CUP leaders decided to disarm Armenians
serving in the army and transfer them to labor battalions.[98] The Armenian soldiers in labor
battalions were systematically executed, although many skilled workers were spared until
1916.[99]

Onset of genocide
Further information: Causes of the Armenian genocide § Wartime radicalization

Armenian defenders in Van

Russian soldiers pictured in the former Armenian village of Sheykhalan near Mush, 1915

Minister of War Enver Pasha took over command of the Ottoman armies for the invasion of
Russian territory, and tried to encircle the Russian Caucasus Army at the Battle of Sarikamish,
fought from December 1914 to January 1915. Unprepared for the harsh winter conditions,[100] his
forces were routed, losing more than 60,000 men.[101] The retreating Ottoman army destroyed
dozens of Ottoman Armenian villages in Bitlis Vilayet, massacring their inhabitants.[97] Enver
publicly blamed his defeat on Armenians who he claimed had actively sided with the Russians, a
theory that became a consensus among CUP leaders.[102][103] Reports of local incidents such as
weapons caches, severed telegraph lines, and occasional killings confirmed preexisting beliefs
about Armenian treachery and fueled paranoia among CUP leaders that a coordinated Armenian
conspiracy was plotting against the empire.[104][105] Discounting contrary reports that most
Armenians were loyal, the CUP leaders decided that the Armenians had to be eliminated to save
the empire.[104]

Massacres of Armenian men were occurring in the vicinity of Bashkale in Van vilayet from
December 1914.[106] ARF leaders attempted to keep the situation calm, warning that even
justifiable self-defense could lead to escalation of killing.[107] The governor, Djevdet Bey,
ordered the Armenians of Van to hand over their arms on 18 April 1915, creating a dilemma: If
they obeyed, the Armenians expected to be killed, but if they refused, it would provide a pretext
for massacres. Armenians fortified themselves in Van and repelled the Ottoman attack that began
on 20 April.[108][109] During the siege, Armenians in surrounding villages were massacred at
Djevdet's orders. Russian forces captured Van on 18 May, finding 55,000 corpses in the
province—about half its prewar Armenian population.[110] Djevdet's forces proceeded to Bitlis
and attacked Armenian and Syriac villages; the men were killed immediately, many women and
children were kidnapped by local Kurds, and others marched away to be killed later. By the end
of June, there were only a dozen Armenians in the vilayet.[111]

The first deportations of Armenians were proposed by Djemal Pasha, the commander of the
Fourth Army, in February 1915 and targeted Armenians in Cilicia (specifically Alexandretta,
Dörtyol, Adana, Hadjin, Zeytun, and Sis) who were relocated to the area around Konya in central
Anatolia.[112] In late March or early April, the CUP Central Committee decided on the large-scale
removal of Armenians from areas near the front lines.[113] During the night of 23–24 April 1915
hundreds of Armenian political activists, intellectuals, and community leaders were rounded up
in Constantinople and across the empire. This order from Talaat, intended to eliminate the
Armenian leadership and anyone capable of organizing resistance, eventually resulted in the
murder of most of those arrested.[114][115][116] The same day, Talaat banned all Armenian political
organizations[117] and ordered that the Armenians who had previously been removed from Cilicia
be deported again, from central Anatolia—where they would likely have survived—to the Syrian
Desert.[118][119]

Systematic deportations
Aims

We have been blamed for not making a distinction between guilty and innocent Armenians. [To
do so] was impossible. Because of the nature of things, one who was still innocent today could
be guilty tomorrow. The concern for the safety of Turkey simply had to silence all other
concerns. Our actions were determined by national and historical necessity.

—Talaat Pasha, Berliner Tageblatt, 4 May 1915[120][121]

During World War I, the CUP—whose central goal was to preserve the Ottoman Empire—came
to identify Armenian civilians as an existential threat.[122][123] CUP leaders held Armenians—
including women and children—collectively guilty for "betraying" the empire, a belief that was
crucial to deciding on genocide in early 1915.[124][125] At the same time, the war provided an
opportunity to enact, in Talaat's words, the "definitive solution to the Armenian
Question".[123][126] The CUP wrongly believed that the Russian Empire sought to annex eastern
Anatolia, and ordered the genocide in large part to prevent this eventuality.[127] The genocide was
intended to permanently eliminate any possibility that Armenians could achieve autonomy or
independence in the empire's eastern provinces.[128] Ottoman records show the government
aimed to reduce Armenians to no more than five percent of the local population in the sources of
deportation and ten percent in the destination areas. This goal could not be accomplished without
mass murder.[129][130][131]

The deportation of Armenians and resettlement of Muslims in their lands was part of a broader
project intended to permanently restructure the demographics of Anatolia.[132][133][134] Armenian
homes, businesses, and land were preferentially allocated to Muslims from outside the empire,
nomads, and the estimated 800,000 (largely Kurdish) Ottoman subjects displaced because of the
war with Russia. Resettled Muslims were spread out (typically limited to 10 percent in any area)
among larger Turkish populations so that they would lose their distinctive characteristics, such as
non-Turkish languages or nomadism.[135] These migrants were exposed to harsh conditions and,
in some cases, violence or restriction from leaving their new villages.[136] The ethnic cleansing of
Anatolia—the Armenian genocide, Assyrian genocide, and expulsion of Greeks after World War
I—paved the way for the formation of an ethno-national Turkish state.[137][138] In September
1918, Talaat emphasized that regardless of losing the war, he had succeeded at "transforming
Turkey to a nation-state in Anatolia".[139][140]

Deportation amounted to a death sentence; the authorities planned for and intended the death of
the deportees.[141][142][143] Deportation was only carried out behind the front lines, where no active
rebellion existed, and was only possible in the absence of widespread resistance. Armenians who
lived in the war zone were instead killed in massacres.[144] Although ostensibly undertaken for
military reasons,[145] the deportation and murder of Armenians did not grant the empire any
military advantage and actually undermined the Ottoman war effort.[146] The empire faced a
dilemma between its goal of eliminating Armenians and its practical need for their labor; those
Armenians retained for their skills, in particular for manufacturing in war industries, were
indispensable to the logistics of the Ottoman Army.[147][148] By late 1915, the CUP had
extinguished Armenian existence from eastern Anatolia.[149]

Map of the Armenian genocide in 1915

Administrative organization

Armenians gathered in a city prior to deportation. They were murdered outside the city.

On 23 May 1915, Talaat ordered the deportation of all Armenians in Van, Bitlis, and
Erzerum.[150][151] To grant a cover of legality to the deportation, already well underway in eastern
Anatolia, the Council of Ministers approved the Temporary Law of Deportation, which allowed
authorities to deport anyone deemed "suspect".[151][152][153] On 21 June, Talaat ordered the
deportation of all Armenians throughout the empire, even Adrianople, 2,000 kilometres
(1,200 mi) from the Russian front.[154] Following the elimination of the Armenian population in
eastern Anatolia, in August 1915, the Armenians of western Anatolia and European Turkey were
targeted for deportation. Some areas with a very low Armenian population and some cities,
including Constantinople, were partially spared.[155][156]
Overall, national, regional, and local levels of governance cooperated with the CUP in the
perpetration of genocide.[157] The Directorate for the Settlement of Tribes and Immigrants
(IAMM) coordinated the deportation and the resettlement of Muslim immigrants in the vacant
houses and lands. The IAMM, under the control of Talaat's Ministry of the Interior, and the
Special Organization, which took orders directly from the CUP Central Committee, closely
coordinated their activities.[158] A dual-track system was used to communicate orders; those for
the deportation of Armenians were communicated to the provincial governors through official
channels, but orders of a criminal character, such as those calling for annihilation, were sent
through party channels and destroyed upon receipt.[159][160] Deportation convoys were mostly
escorted by gendarmes or local militia. The killings near the front lines were carried out by the
Special Organization, and those farther away also involved local militias, bandits, gendarmes, or
Kurdish tribes depending on the area.[161] Within the area controlled by the Third Army, which
held eastern Anatolia, the army was only involved in genocidal atrocities in the vilayets of Van,
Erzerum, and Bitlis.[162]

Many perpetrators came from the Caucasus (Chechens and Circassians), who identified the
Armenians with their Russian conquerors. Nomadic Kurds committed many atrocities during the
genocide, but settled Kurds only rarely did so.[163] Perpetrators had several motives, including
ideology, revenge, desire for Armenian property, and careerism.[164] To motivate perpetrators,
state-appointed imams encouraged the killing of Armenians[165] and killers were entitled to a
third of Armenian movable property (another third went to local authorities and the last to the
CUP). Embezzling beyond that was punished.[166][167] Ottoman politicians and officials who
opposed the genocide were dismissed or assassinated.[157][162][168] The government decreed that
any Muslim who harbored an Armenian against the will of the authorities would be
executed.[169][170]

Death marches

On 24 September 1915, United States consul Leslie Davis visited Lake Hazar and found nearby
gorges choked with corpses and hundreds of bodies floating in the lake.[171]

Although the majority of able-bodied Armenian men had been conscripted into the army, others
deserted, paid the exemption tax, or fell outside the age range of conscription. Unlike the earlier
massacres of Ottoman Armenians, in 1915 Armenians were not usually killed in their villages, to
avoid destruction of property or unauthorized looting. Instead, the men were usually separated
from the rest of the deportees during the first few days and executed. Few resisted, believing it
would put their families in greater danger.[161] Boys above the age of twelve (sometimes fifteen)
were treated as adult men.[172] Execution sites were chosen for proximity to major roads and for
rugged terrain, lakes, wells, or cisterns to facilitate the concealment or disposal of
corpses.[171][173][174] The convoys would stop at a nearby transit camp, where the escorts would
demand a ransom from the Armenians. Those unable to pay were murdered.[161] Units of the
Special Organization, often wearing gendarme uniforms, were stationed at the killing sites;
escorting gendarmes often did not participate in killing.[174]

At least 150,000 Armenians passed through Erzindjan from June 1915, where a series of transit
camps were set up to control the flow of victims to the killing site at the nearby Kemah
gorge.[175] Thousands of Armenians were killed near Lake Hazar, pushed by paramilitaries off
the cliffs.[171] More than 500,000 Armenians passed through the Firincilar plain south of Malatya,
one of the deadliest areas during the genocide. Arriving convoys, having passed through the
plain to approach the Kahta highlands, would have found gorges already filled with corpses from
previous convoys.[173][176] Many others were held in tributary valleys of the Tigris, Euphrates, or
Murat and systematically executed by the Special Organization.[177] Armenian men were often
drowned by being tied together back-to-back before being thrown in the water, a method that
was not used on women.[178]

The corpses of Armenians beside a road, a common sight along deportation routes

Authorities viewed disposal of bodies through rivers as a cheap and efficient method, but it
caused widespread pollution downstream. So many bodies floated down the Tigris and Euphrates
that they sometimes blocked the rivers and needed to be cleared with explosives. Other rotting
corpses became stuck to the riverbanks, and still others traveled as far as the Persian Gulf. The
rivers remained polluted long after the massacres, causing epidemics downstream.[179] Tens of
thousands of Armenians died along the roads and their bodies were buried hastily or, more often,
simply left beside the roads. The Ottoman government ordered the corpses to be cleared as soon
as possible to prevent both photographic documentation and disease epidemics, but these orders
were not uniformly followed.[180][181]

Women and children, who made up the great majority of deportees, were usually not executed
immediately, but subjected to hard marches through mountainous terrain without food and water.
Those who could not keep up were left to die or shot.[182] During 1915, some were forced to walk
as far as 1,000 kilometres (620 mi) in the summer heat.[143] Some deportees from western
Anatolia were allowed to travel by rail.[155] There was a distinction between the convoys from
eastern Anatolia, which were eliminated almost in their entirety, and those from farther west,
which made up most of those surviving to reach Syria.[183] For example, around 99 percent of
Armenians deported from Erzerum did not reach their destination.[151]

Islamization

Islamized Armenians who were "rescued from Arabs" after the war

Islamization of Armenians was carried out as a systematic state policy involving the
bureaucracy, police, judiciary, and clergy and was a major structural component of the
genocide.[184][185] An estimated 100,000 to 200,000 Armenians were Islamized,[186] and it is
estimated that in the early twenty-first century as many as two million Turkish citizens may have
at least one Armenian grandparent.[187] Some Armenians were allowed to convert to Islam and
evade deportation, but where their numbers exceeded the five to ten percent threshold, or where
there was a risk of their being able to preserve their nationality and culture, the regime insisted
on their physical destruction.[188] Talaat Pasha personally authorized conversion of Armenians
and carefully tracked the loyalty of converted Armenians until the end of the war.[189] Although
the first and most important step was conversion to Islam, the process also required the
eradication of Armenian names, language, and culture, and for women, immediate marriage to a
Muslim man.[190] Although Islamization was the most feasible opportunity for survival, it also
transgressed Armenian moral and social norms.[191]

The CUP allowed Armenian women to marry into Muslim households, as these women had to
convert to Islam and would lose their Armenian identity.[173] Young women and girls were often
appropriated as house servants or sex slaves. Some boys were abducted to work as forced
laborers for individual Muslims.[173][192] Some children were forcibly seized, but others were sold
or given up by their parents to save their lives.[193][194] Special state-run orphanages were also set
up with strict procedures intending to deprive their charges of an Armenian identity.[195] Most
Armenian children who survived the genocide endured exploitation, hard labor without pay,
forced conversion to Islam, and physical and sexual abuse.[192] Armenian women captured during
the journey ended up in Turkish or Kurdish households; those who were Islamized during the
second phase of the genocide found themselves in an Arab or Bedouin environment.[196]

The rape, sexual abuse, and prostitution of Armenian women were all very common.[197]
Although Armenian women tried to avoid sexual violence, suicide was often the only
alternative.[198] Deportees were displayed naked in Damascus and sold as sex slaves in some
areas, constituting an important source of income for accompanying gendarmes.[199] Some were
sold in Arabian slave markets to Muslim Hajj pilgrims and ended up as far away as Tunisia or
Algeria.[200]

Confiscation of property

Main articles: Confiscation of Armenian properties in Turkey and National economy (Turkey)

Çankaya Mansion, the official residence of the president of Turkey, was confiscated from
Ohannes Kasabian, an Armenian businessman, in 1915.[201]

A secondary motivation for genocide was the destruction of the Armenian bourgeoisie to make
room for a Turkish and Muslim middle class[128] and build a statist "national economy"
controlled by Muslim Turks.[163][202] The campaign to Turkify the economy began in June 1914
with a law that obliged many ethnic minority merchants to hire Muslims. Following the
deportations, the businesses of the victims were taken over by Muslims who were often
incompetent, leading to economic difficulties.[203] The genocide had catastrophic effects on the
Ottoman economy; Muslims were disadvantaged by the deportation of skilled professionals and
entire districts fell into famine following their farmers' deportation.[204] The Ottoman and Turkish
governments passed a series of Abandoned Properties Laws to manage and redistribute property
confiscated from Armenians.[205][206] Although the laws maintained that the state was simply
administering the properties on behalf of the absent Armenians, there was no provision to return
them to the owners—it was presumed that they had ceased to exist.[207]

Historians Taner Akçam and Ümit Kurt argue that "The Republic of Turkey and its legal system
were built, in a sense, on the seizure of Armenian cultural, social, and economic wealth, and on
the removal of the Armenian presence."[205] The proceeds from the sale of confiscated property
was often used to fund the deportation of Armenians and resettlement of Muslims, as well as for
army, militia, and other government spending.[208] Ultimately this formed much of the basis of
the industry and economy of the post-1923 republic, endowing it with capital.[209][210] The
dispossession and exile of Armenian competitors enabled many lower-class Turks (i.e. peasantry,
soldiers, and laborers) to rise to the middle class.[209] Confiscation of Armenian assets continued
into the second half of the twentieth century,[211] and in 2006 the National Security Council ruled
that property records from 1915 must be kept closed to protect national security.[212] Outside of
Istanbul, the traces of Armenian existence in Turkey, including churches and monasteries,
libraries, khachkars, and animal and place names, have been systematically erased, beginning
during the war and continuing for decades afterward.[213][214][215]

Destination
Further information: Deir ez-Zor camps and Ras al-Ayn camps

An Armenian woman kneeling beside a dead child in a field outside of Aleppo

Khabur near Ras al-Ayn

The first arrivals in mid-1915 were accommodated in Aleppo. From mid-November, the convoys
were denied access to the city and redirected along the Baghdad Railway or the Euphrates
towards Mosul. The first transit camp was established at Sibil, east of Aleppo; one convoy would
arrive each day while another would depart for Meskene or Deir ez-Zor.[216] Dozens of
concentration camps were set up in Syria and Upper Mesopotamia.[217] By October 1915, some
870,000 deportees had reached Syria and Upper Mesopotamia. Most were repeatedly transferred
between camps, being held in each camp for a few weeks, until there were very few
survivors.[218] This strategy physically weakened the Armenians and spread disease, so much that
some camps were shut down in late 1915 due to the threat of disease spreading to the Ottoman
military.[219][220] In late 1915, the camps around Aleppo were liquidated and the survivors were
forced to march to Ras al-Ayn; the camps around Ras al-Ayn were closed in early 1916 and the
survivors sent to Deir ez-Zor.[221]

In general, Armenians were denied food and water during and after their forced march to the
Syrian desert;[219][222] many died of starvation, exhaustion, or disease, especially dysentery,
typhus, and pneumonia.[219][223] Some local officials gave Armenians food; others took bribes to
provide food and water.[219] Aid organizations were officially barred from providing food to the
deportees, although some circumvented these prohibitions.[224] Survivors testified that some
Armenians refused aid as they believed it would only prolong their suffering.[225] The guards
raped female prisoners and also allowed Bedouins to raid the camps at night for looting and rape;
some women were forced into marriage.[226][222] Thousands of Armenian children were sold to
childless Turks, Arabs, and Jews, who would come to the camps to buy them from their
parents.[218] In the western Levant, governed by the Ottoman Fourth Army under Djemal Pasha,
there were no concentration camps or large-scale massacres, rather Armenians were resettled and
recruited to work for the war effort. They had to convert to Islam or face deportation to another
area.[227]

Armenian ability to adapt and survive was greater than the perpetrators expected.[141][228] A
loosely organized, Armenian-led resistance network based in Aleppo succeeded in helping many
deportees, saving Armenian lives.[229] At the beginning of 1916 some 500,000 deportees were
alive in Syria and Mesopotamia.[183] Afraid that surviving Armenians might return home after the
war, Talaat Pasha ordered a second wave of massacres in February 1916.[230] Another wave of
deportations targeted Armenians remaining in Anatolia.[231] More than 200,000 Armenians were
killed between March and October 1916, often in remote areas near Deir ez-Zor and on parts of
the Khabur valley, where their bodies would not create a public health hazard.[232][233] The
massacres killed most of the Armenians who had survived the camp system.[221]

International reaction
Fundraising poster for Near East Relief

The Ottoman Empire tried to prevent journalists and photographers from documenting the
atrocities, threatening them with arrest.[234][235] Nevertheless, substantiated reports of mass
killings were widely covered in Western newspapers.[236][237] On 24 May 1915, the Triple
Entente (Russia, Britain, and France) formally condemned the Ottoman Empire for "crimes
against humanity and civilization", and threatened to hold the perpetrators accountable.[238]
Witness testimony was published in books such as The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman
Empire (1916) and Ambassador Morgenthau's Story (1918), which raised public awareness
about the genocide.[239]

The German Empire was a military ally of the Ottoman Empire during World War I.[240] German
diplomats approved limited removals of Armenians in early 1915, and took no action against the
genocide,[241][242] which has been a source of controversy.[240][243]

Relief efforts were organized in dozens of countries to raise money for Armenian survivors. By
1925, people in 49 countries were organizing "Golden Rule Sundays" during which they
consumed the diet of Armenian refugees, to raise money for humanitarian efforts.[244] Between
1915 and 1930, Near East Relief raised $110 million ($1.8 billion adjusted for inflation) for
refugees from the Ottoman Empire.[245]

Aftermath
End of World War I
Percent of prewar Armenian population "unaccounted for" in 1917 based on Talaat Pasha's
record. Black indicates that 100 percent of Armenians have disappeared. "Resettlement" zone is
displayed in red.

Intentional, state-sponsored killing of Armenians mostly ceased by the end of January 1917,
although sporadic massacres and starvation continued.[246] Both contemporaries and later
historians have estimated that around 1 million Armenians died during the genocide,[3][247][248]
with figures ranging from 600,000 to 1.5 million deaths.[3] Between 800,000 and 1.2 million
Armenians were deported,[249][250] and contemporaries estimated that by late 1916 only 200,000
were still alive.[249] As the British Army advanced in 1917 and 1918 northwards through the
Levant, they liberated around 100,000 to 150,000 Armenians working for the Ottoman military
under abysmal conditions, not including those held by Arab tribes.[251]

As a result of the Bolshevik Revolution and a subsequent separate peace with the Central
Powers, the Russian army withdrew and Ottoman forces advanced into eastern Anatolia.[252] The
First Republic of Armenia was proclaimed in May 1918, at which time 50 percent of its
population were refugees and 60 percent of its territory was under Ottoman occupation.[253]
Ottoman troops withdrew from parts of Armenia following the October 1918 Armistice of
Mudros.[254] From 1918 to 1920, Armenian militants committed revenge killings of thousands of
Muslims, which have been cited as a retroactive excuse for genocide.[255][256] In 1918, at least
200,000 people in Armenia, mostly refugees, died from starvation or disease, in part due to a
Turkish blockade of food supplies[257] and the deliberate destruction of crops in eastern Armenia
by Turkish troops, both before and after the armistice.[258]

Armenians organized a coordinated effort known as vorpahavak (lit. 'the gathering of orphans')

that reclaimed thousands of kidnapped Armenian women and children.[259] Armenian leaders
abandoned traditional patrilineality to classify children born to Armenian women and their
Muslim captors as Armenian.[260] An orphanage in Alexandropol held 25,000 orphans, the largest
number in the world.[261] In 1920, the Armenian Patriarchate of Constantinople reported it was
caring for 100,000 orphans, estimating that another 100,000 remained captive.[262]

Trials

Main articles: Prosecution of Ottoman war criminals and Ottoman Special Military Tribunal
Following the armistice, Allied governments championed the prosecution of war criminals.[263]
Grand Vizier Damat Ferid Pasha publicly recognized that 800,000 Ottoman citizens of Armenian
origin had died as a result of state policy[264] and stated that "humanity, civilizations are
shuddering, and forever will shudder, in face of this tragedy".[265] The postwar Ottoman
government held the Ottoman Special Military Tribunal, by which it sought to pin the Armenian
genocide onto the CUP leadership while exonerating the Ottoman Empire as a whole, therefore
avoiding partition by the Allies.[266] The court ruled that "the crime of mass murder" of
Armenians was "organized and carried out by the top leaders of CUP".[267] Eighteen perpetrators
(including Talaat, Enver, and Djemal) were sentenced to death, of whom only three were
ultimately executed as the remainder had fled and were tried in absentia.[268][269] The 1920 Treaty
of Sèvres, which awarded Armenia a large area in eastern Anatolia, eliminated the Ottoman
government's purpose for holding the trials.[270] Prosecution was hampered by a widespread
belief among Turkish Muslims that the actions against the Armenians were not punishable
crimes.[163] Increasingly, the crimes were considered necessary and justified to establish a
Turkish nation-state.[271]

On 15 March 1921, Talaat was assassinated in Berlin as part of Operation Nemesis, the 1920s
covert operation of the ARF to kill the perpetrators of the Armenian genocide.[272][273][274] The
trial of his admitted killer, Soghomon Tehlirian, focused on Talaat's responsibility for genocide.
Tehlirian was acquitted by a German jury.[275][276]

Turkish War of Independence

Children evacuated from Harput by Near East Relief in 1922 or 1923

Refugee camp in Beirut, early 1920s

The CUP regrouped as the Turkish nationalist movement to fight the Turkish War of
Independence,[277][278][279] relying on the support of perpetrators of the genocide and those who
had profited from it.[280][281] This movement saw the return of Armenian survivors as a mortal
threat to its nationalist ambitions and the interests of its supporters. The return of survivors was
therefore impossible in most of Anatolia[138][279] and thousands of Armenians who tried were
murdered.[282] Historian Raymond Kévorkian states that the war of independence was "intended
to complete the genocide by finally eradicating Armenian, Greek, and Syriac survivors".[283] In
1920, Turkish general Kâzım Karabekir invaded Armenia with orders "to eliminate Armenia
physically and politically".[284][285] Nearly 100,000 Armenians were massacred in Transcaucasia
by the Turkish army and another 100,000 fled from Cilicia during the French withdrawal.[285]
According to Kévorkian, only the Soviet occupation of Armenia prevented another genocide.[284]

The victorious nationalists subsequently declared the Republic of Turkey in 1923.[286] CUP war
criminals were granted immunity[287] and later that year, the Treaty of Lausanne established
Turkey's current borders and provided for the Greek population's expulsion. Its minority
protection provisions had no enforcement mechanism and were disregarded in practice.[288][289]

Armenian survivors were left mainly in three locations. About 295,000 Armenians had fled to
Russian-controlled territory during the genocide and ended up mostly in Soviet Armenia. An
estimated 200,000 Armenian refugees settled in the Middle East, forming a new wave of the
Armenian diaspora.[290] In the Republic of Turkey, about 100,000 Armenians lived in
Constantinople and another 200,000 lived in the provinces, largely women and children who had
been forcibly converted.[291] Though Armenians in Constantinople faced discrimination, they
were allowed to maintain their cultural identity, unlike those elsewhere in Turkey[291][292] who
continued to face forced Islamization and kidnapping of girls after 1923.[293][294] Between 1922
and 1929, the Turkish authorities eliminated surviving Armenians from southern Turkey,
expelling thousands to French-mandate Syria.[295]

Legacy
According to historian Margaret Lavinia Anderson, the Armenian genocide reached an "iconic
status" as "the apex of horrors conceivable" before World War II.[296] It was described by
contemporaries as "the murder of a nation", "race extermination",[297] "the greatest crime of the
ages", and "the blackest page in modern history".[298][299] In Germany, the Nazis viewed post-
1923 Turkey as a post-genocidal paradise and, according to historian Stefan Ihrig, "incorporated
the Armenian genocide, its 'lessons', tactics, and 'benefits', into their own worldview".[300]

Turkey

See also: Armenian genocide denial

In the 1920s, Kurds and Alevis replaced Armenians as the perceived internal enemy of the
Turkish state. Militarism, weak rule of law, lack of minority rights, and especially the belief that
Turkey is constantly under threat—thus justifying state violence—are among the main legacies
of 1915 in Turkey.[301] In postwar Turkey, the perpetrators of the genocide were hailed as
"martyrs" of the national cause.[279] Turkey's official denial of the Armenian genocide continues
to rely on the CUP's justification of its actions. The Turkish government maintains that the mass
deportation of Armenians was a legitimate action to combat an existential threat to the empire,
but that there was no intention to exterminate the Armenian people.[302][303] The government's
position is supported by the majority of Turkish citizens.[304] Many Kurds, who themselves have
suffered political repression in Turkey, have recognized and condemned the genocide.[305][306]

The Turkish state perceives open discussion of the genocide as a threat to national security
because of its connection with the foundation of the republic, and for decades strictly censored
it.[307][308] In 2002, the AK Party came to power and relaxed censorship to a certain extent, and
the profile of the issue was raised by the 2007 assassination of Hrant Dink, a Turkish-Armenian
journalist known for his advocacy of reconciliation.[309] Although the AK Party softened the state
denial rhetoric, describing Armenians as part of the Ottoman Empire's war losses,[310] during the
2010s political repression and censorship increased again.[311] Turkey's century-long effort to
prevent any recognition or mention of the genocide in foreign countries has included millions of
dollars in lobbying,[312] as well as intimidation and threats.[313]

Armenia and Azerbaijan

Aerial view of the Armenian Genocide memorial complex on a hill above Yerevan

Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day is commemorated on 24 April each year in Armenia and
abroad, the anniversary of the deportation of Armenian intellectuals.[314][315] On 24 April 1965,
100,000 Armenians protested in Yerevan, and diaspora Armenians demonstrated across the
world in favor of recognition of the genocide and annexing land from Turkey.[316][314] A
memorial was completed two years later, at Tsitsernakaberd above Yerevan.[314][317]

Since 1988, Armenians and Turkic Azeris have been involved in a conflict over Nagorno-
Karabakh, an Armenian enclave internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan. Initially
involving peaceful demonstrations by Armenians, the conflict turned violent and has featured
massacres by both sides, resulting in the displacement of more than half a million
people.[318][319][320] During the conflict, the Azerbaijani and Armenian governments have
regularly accused each other of plotting genocide.[318] Azerbaijan has also joined the Turkish
effort to deny the Armenian genocide.[321]
International recognition

Main article: Armenian genocide recognition

National legislatures that have passed resolutions recognizing the Armenian genocide
States that deny there was an Armenian genocide

In response to continuing denial by the Turkish state, many Armenian diaspora activists have
lobbied for formal recognition of the Armenian genocide, an effort that has become a central
concern of the Armenian diaspora.[322][323] From the 1970s onwards, many countries avoided
recognition to preserve good relations with Turkey.[324] As of 2022, 31 countries have recognized
the genocide, along with Pope Francis and the European Parliament.[325][326]

Cultural depictions

Main article: Armenian genocide in culture

After meeting Armenian survivors in the Middle East, Austrian–Jewish writer Franz Werfel
wrote The Forty Days of Musa Dagh (1933), a fictionalized retelling of the successful Armenian
uprising in Musa Dagh, as a warning of the dangers of Nazism.[327] According to Ihrig, the book
is among the most important works of twentieth-century literature to address genocide and "is
still considered essential reading for Armenians worldwide".[328] The genocide became a central
theme in English-language Armenian-American literature.[329] The first film about the Armenian
genocide, Ravished Armenia, was released in 1919 as a fundraiser for Near East Relief, based on
the survival story of Aurora Mardiganian, who played herself.[330][331][332] Since then more films
about the genocide have been made, although it took several decades for any of them to reach a
mass-market audience.[333] The abstract expressionist paintings of Arshile Gorky were influenced
by his experience of the genocide.[334] More than 200 memorials have been erected in 32
countries to commemorate the event.[335]

Archives and historiography

See also: Kemalist historiography

The genocide is extensively documented in the archives of Germany, Austria, the United States,
Russia, France, and the United Kingdom,[336] as well as the Ottoman archives, despite systematic
purges of incriminating documents by Turkey.[337] There are also thousands of eyewitness
accounts from Western missionaries and Armenian survivors.[338][339][340] Polish-Jewish lawyer
Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term genocide in 1944, became interested in war crimes after
reading about the 1921 trial of Soghomon Tehlirian for the assassination of Talaat Pasha.
Lemkin recognized the fate of the Armenians as one of the most significant genocides in the
twentieth century.[341][342] Almost all historians and scholars outside of Turkey, and an increasing
number of Turkish scholars, recognize the destruction of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire as
genocide.[304][343]

References
1.

1. Also known by other names.

1.

• Suny 2015, pp. 245, 330.

• • Bozarslan et al. 2015, p. 187.
• • Morris & Ze'evi 2019, p. 1.
• • Ahmed 2006, p. 1576.
• • Suny 2015, p. xiv.
• • Payaslian 2007, pp. 34–35.
• • Payaslian 2007, pp. 105–106.
• • Suny 2015, pp. 11, 15.
• • Suny 2015, p. 12.
• • Suny 2015, pp. 5, 7.
• • Suny 2015, p. xviii.
• • Kévorkian 2011, p. 279.
• • Bloxham 2005, pp. 8–9.
• • Astourian 2011, p. 60.
• • Suny 2015, p. 19.
• • Kévorkian 2011, p. 9.
• • Kieser 2018, pp. 8, 40.
• • Suny 2015, pp. 26–27.
• • Suny 2015, pp. 19, 53.
• • Astourian 2011, pp. 60, 63.
• • Astourian 2011, pp. 56, 60.
• • Suny 2015, pp. 19, 21.
• • Göçek 2015, p. 123.
• • Astourian 2011, pp. 62, 65.
• • Suny 2015, p. 55.
• • Kévorkian 2011, p. 271.
• • Suny 2015, pp. 54–56.
• • Suny 2015, pp. 87–88.
• • Suny 2015, pp. 94–95, 105.
• • Suny 2015, pp. 95–96.
• • Astourian 2011, p. 64.
• • Suny 2015, p. 97.
• • Suny 2015, p. 96.
• • Suny 2015, pp. 48–49.
• • Kévorkian 2011, pp. 75–76.
• • Kévorkian 2011, pp. 11, 65.
• • Suny 2015, p. 129.
• • Suny 2015, pp. 129–130.
• • Suny 2015, p. 130.
• • Kévorkian 2011, p. 11.
• • Suny 2015, p. 131.
• • Kévorkian 2011, p. 266.
• • Suny 2015, pp. 92–93, 99, 139–140.
• • Kieser 2018, pp. 46–47.
• • Suny 2015, pp. 152–153.
• • Kieser 2018, p. 50.
• • Kieser 2018, pp. 53–54.
• • Göçek 2015, p. 192.
• • Kieser 2018, pp. 54–55.
• • Suny 2015, pp. 154–156.
• • Kaligian 2017, pp. 89–91.
• • Kaligian 2017, pp. 82–84.
• • Kaligian 2017, pp. 86–92.
• • Astourian 2011, p. 66.
• • Suny 2015, pp. 165–166.
• • Suny 2015, pp. 168–169.
• • Suny 2015, p. 171.
• • Suny 2015, p. 172.
• • Kieser 2018, pp. 152–153.
• • Astourian 2011, pp. 66–67.
• • Kaligian 2017, p. 92.
• • Kieser 2018, pp. 163–164.
• • Akçam 2019, pp. 461–462.
• • Suny 2015, pp. 203, 359.
• • Suny 2015, pp. 184–185.
• • Kieser 2018, p. 167.
• • Suny 2015, pp. 185, 363.
• • Üngör 2012, p. 50.
• • Bozarslan et al. 2015, pp. 169, 171.
• • Bloxham & Göçek 2008, p. 363.
• • Kieser 2018, p. 156.
• • Kaligian 2017, pp. 97–98.
• • Suny 2015, p. 193.
• • Göçek 2015, p. 191.
• • Suny 2015, pp. 189–190.
• • Kieser 2018, pp. 133–134, 136, 138, 172.
• • Kaligian 2017, pp. 95, 97.
• • Kaligian 2017, pp. 96–97.
• • Suny 2015, pp. 193, 211–212.
• • Kieser 2018, pp. 169, 176–177.
• • Kaligian 2017, p. 98.
• • Bjørnlund 2008, p. 51.
• • Suny 2015, pp. 214–215.
• • Suny 2015, pp. 223–224.
• • Üngör 2016, pp. 16–17.
• • Suny 2015, pp. 233–234.
• • Suny 2015, p. 218.
• • Suny 2015, pp. 221–222.
• • Suny 2015, p. 225.
• • Suny 2015, pp. 226–227.
• • Kévorkian 2011, p. 242.
• • Bozarslan et al. 2015, p. 179.
• • Suny 2015, pp. 243–244.
• • Üngör 2016, p. 18.
• • Akçam 2019, p. 475.
• • Akçam 2019, pp. 478–479.
• • Üngör 2016, p. 19.
• • Suny 2015, p. 244.
• • Suny 2015, pp. 248–249.
• • Suny 2015, pp. 241–242.
• • Akçam 2012, p. 157.
• • Üngör 2016, pp. 18–19.
• • Suny 2015, p. 243.
• • Suny 2015, p. 248.
• • Kieser 2018, pp. 235–238.
• • Akçam 2019, p. 472.
• • Suny 2015, p. 255.
• • Suny 2015, p. 257.
• • Kévorkian 2011, p. 319.
• • Suny 2015, pp. 259–260.
• • Suny 2015, pp. 287, 289.
• • Dündar 2011, p. 281.
• • Suny 2015, pp. 247–248.
• • Kieser 2018, p. 10.
• • Kévorkian 2011, pp. 251–252.
• • Suny 2015, pp. 271–272.
• • Suny 2015, p. 273.
• • Suny 2015, pp. 274–275.
• • Akçam 2012, p. 188.
• • Ihrig 2016, pp. 162–163.
• • Bozarslan et al. 2015, p. 168.
• • Akçam 2012, p. 337.
• • Suny 2015, p. 245.
• • Akçam 2019, p. 457.
• • Bozarslan et al. 2015, pp. 166–167.
• • Dündar 2011, p. 284.
• • Nichanian 2015, p. 202.
• • Watenpaugh 2013, p. 284.
• • Akçam 2012, pp. 242, 247–248.
• • Dündar 2011, p. 282.
• • Kieser 2018, p. 261.
• • Kaiser 2019, 6.
• • Bozarslan et al. 2015, p. 102.
• • Nichanian 2015, p. 254.
• • Gingeras 2016, pp. 176–177.
• • Gingeras 2016, p. 178.
• • Suny 2015, pp. 349, 364.
• • Bozarslan et al. 2015, p. 311.
• • Kieser 2018, p. 376.
• • Nichanian 2015, p. 227.
• • Kaiser 2010, p. 384.
• • Dündar 2011, pp. 276–277.
• • Üngör 2012, p. 54.
• • Kaiser 2010, pp. 366, 383.
• • Mouradian 2018, p. 148.
• • Rogan 2015, p. 184.
• • Cora 2020, pp. 50–51.
• • Suny 2015, p. 317.
• • Kieser 2018, p. 240.
• • Kaiser 2019, 10.
• • Üngör 2012, p. 53.
• • Dündar 2011, p. 283.
• • Bozarslan et al. 2015, p. 96.
• • Bozarslan et al. 2015, p. 97.
• • Kaiser 2010, p. 378.
• • Akçam 2012, pp. 399–400.
• • Kieser 2018, p. 247.
• • Bozarslan et al. 2015, pp. 89–90.
• • Bozarslan et al. 2015, pp. 92–93.
• • Akçam 2012, pp. 194–195.
• • Kaiser 2010, p. 376.
• • Bozarslan et al. 2015, p. 94.
• • Kévorkian 2011, p. 810.
• • Suny 2015, p. 352.
• • Üngör 2012, p. 58.
• • Kaiser 2019, 35, 37.
• • Bozarslan et al. 2015, pp. 98–99.
• • Kévorkian 2011, pp. 246–247.
• • Üngör 2012, p. 61.
• • Akçam 2012, pp. 327–328.
• • Kévorkian 2014, p. 91.
• • Maksudyan 2020, pp. 121–122.
• • Kaiser 2010, p. 377.
• • Bozarslan et al. 2015, p. 93.
• • Kaiser 2019, 3, 22.
• • Kévorkian 2014, p. 93.
• • Kévorkian 2014, p. 90.
• • Kévorkian 2014, p. 92.
• • Kévorkian 2014, p. 95.
• • Akçam 2018, p. 158.
• • Kévorkian 2014, p. 94.
• • Kévorkian 2014, pp. 92–93.
• • Kévorkian 2011, p. 808.
• • Akçam 2012, pp. 314, 316.
• • Kurt 2016, 2, 21.
• • Akçam 2012, p. 331.
• • Watenpaugh 2013, p. 291.
• • Akçam 2012, pp. 290–291.
• • Kurt 2016, 5, 13–14.
• • Kurt 2016, 15.
• • Kurt 2016, 5.
• • Watenpaugh 2013, pp. 291–292.
• • Akçam 2012, p. 314.
• • Watenpaugh 2013, pp. 284–285.
• • Kurt 2016, 17.
• • Kévorkian 2011, pp. 757–758.
• • Akçam 2012, p. 312.
• • Kaiser 2010, pp. 377–378.
• • Akçam 2012, pp. 312–315.
• • Kévorkian 2011, p. 758.
• • Cheterian 2015, pp. 245–246.
• • Kieser 2018, p. 273.
• • Kévorkian 2011, p. 202.
• • Suny 2015, pp. 316–317.
• • Akçam & Kurt 2015, p. 2.
• • Kévorkian 2011, pp. 203–204.
• • Akçam & Kurt 2015, pp. 11–12.
• • Akçam 2012, pp. 256–257.
• • Üngör & Polatel 2011, p. 80.
• • Bozarslan et al. 2015, p. 189.
• • Kieser 2018, p. 268.
• • Akçam & Kurt 2015, p. 3.
• • Cheterian 2015, pp. 64–65.
• • Göçek 2015, p. 411.
• • Suciyan 2015, p. 59.
• • Kévorkian 2014, p. 97.
• • Kévorkian 2011, p. 625.
• • Kévorkian 2014, p. 98.
• • Shirinian 2017, p. 21.
• • Kévorkian 2011, pp. 633–635.
• • Mouradian 2018, p. 155.
• • Kaiser 2010, p. 380.
• • Kévorkian 2014, p. 96.
• • Shirinian 2017, p. 23.
• • Shirinian 2017, pp. 20–21.
• • Mouradian 2018, p. 152.
• • Kévorkian 2011, pp. 673–674.
• • Kévorkian 2011, p. 693.
• • Mouradian 2018, p. 154.
• • Kieser 2018, pp. 259, 265.
• • Kévorkian 2011, pp. 695, 808.
• • Kieser 2018, p. 262.
• • Kévorkian 2014, p. 107.
• • Leonard 2004, p. 297.
• • Akçam 2018, p. 157.
• • Leonard 2004, p. 300.
• • de Waal 2015, p. 2.
• • Suny 2015, p. 308.
• • Tusan 2014, pp. 57–58.
• • Suny 2015, p. 298.
• • Kieser & Bloxham 2014, pp. 600, 606–607.
• • Kieser 2018, pp. 20–21.
• • Ihrig 2016, p. 134.
• • Anderson 2011, p. 200.
• • "History". Near East Foundation. Archived from the original on 3 June 2015. Retrieved 10
March 2021.
• • Suny 2015, p. 330.
• • Kévorkian 2011, p. 721.
• • de Waal 2015, p. 20.
• • Morris & Ze'evi 2019, p. 486.
• • Suny 2015, pp. 354–355.
• • Kévorkian 2020, pp. 151–152.
• • Payaslian 2007, pp. 148–149.
• • Payaslian 2007, pp. 150–151.
• • Payaslian 2007, pp. 152–153.
• • Kieser 2018, p. 367.
• • Suny 2015, p. 342.
• • Kévorkian 2011, p. 706.
• • Shirinian 2017, p. 24.
• • Ekmekçioğlu 2013, pp. 534–535.
• • Ekmekçioğlu 2013, pp. 530, 545.
• • de Waal 2015, p. 76.
• • Kévorkian 2011, p. 759.
• • Dadrian & Akçam 2011, pp. 23–24.
• • Dadrian & Akçam 2011, p. 47.
• • Dadrian & Akçam 2011, p. 49.
• • Nichanian 2015, p. 207.
• • Dadrian & Akçam 2011, p. 120.
• • Üngör 2012, p. 62.
• • Dadrian & Akçam 2011, pp. 24, 195.
• • Nichanian 2015, p. 217.
• • Göçek 2011, pp. 45–46.
• • Cheterian 2015, pp. 126–127.
• • Kieser 2018, pp. 403–404, 409.
• • Suny 2015, p. 346.
• • Suny 2015, pp. 344–346.
• • Ihrig 2016, pp. 226–227, 235, 262, 293, "Trial in Berlin" passim.
• • Suny 2015, pp. 338–339.
• • Kieser 2018, p. 319.
• • Nichanian 2015, p. 242.
• • Zürcher 2011, p. 316.
• • Cheterian 2015, p. 155.
• • Nichanian 2015, pp. 229–230.
• • Kévorkian 2020, p. 165.
• • Kévorkian 2020, pp. 164–165.
• • Nichanian 2015, p. 238.
• • Nichanian 2015, p. 244.
• • Dadrian & Akçam 2011, p. 104.
• • Kieser 2018, p. 28.
• • Suny 2015, pp. 367–368.
• • Cheterian 2015, pp. 103–104.
• • Cheterian 2015, p. 104.
• • Suciyan 2015, p. 27.
• • Cheterian 2015, p. 203.
• • Suciyan 2015, p. 65.
• • Kévorkian 2020, p. 161.
• • Anderson 2011, p. 199.
• • Ihrig 2016, pp. 9, 55.
• • de Waal 2015, p. 21.
• • Kieser 2018, pp. 289–290.
• • Ihrig 2016, pp. 349, 354.
• • Nichanian 2015, pp. 263–264.
• • Suny 2015, pp. xii, 361.
• • Akçam 2012, pp. xi, 451.
• • Göçek 2015, p. 1.
• • Cheterian 2015, pp. 273–275.
• • Galip 2020, pp. 162–163.
• • Akçam & Kurt 2015, pp. 3–4.
• • Galip 2020, p. 3.
• • Galip 2020, pp. 3–4.
• • Ben Aharon 2019, p. 339.
• • Galip 2020, pp. 83–85.
• • Göçek 2015, p. 2.
• • Chorbajian 2016, p. 178.
• • Cheterian 2015, p. 110.
• • Ben Aharon 2019, p. 347.
• • de Waal 2015, pp. 140, 142.
• • de Waal 2015, pp. 146–147.
• • Bloxham 2005, pp. 232–233.
• • Cheterian 2015, pp. 279–282.
• • de Waal 2015, pp. 196–197.
• • Koinova 2017, p. 122.
• • Koinova 2017, pp. 112, 221–222.
• • de Waal 2015, p. 3.
• • Ben Aharon 2019, pp. 340–341.
• • Koinova 2017, p. 117.
• • "Countries that Recognize the Armenian Genocide". Armenian National Institute. Archived
from the original on 14 September 2019. Retrieved 25 February 2021.
• • Ihrig 2016, pp. 1–2.
• • Ihrig 2016, p. 364.
• • Der Mugrdechian 2016, p. 273.
• • Marsoobian 2016, pp. 73–74.
• • Tusan 2014, pp. 69–70.
• • de Waal 2015, pp. 77–78.
• • Marsoobian 2016, p. 73.
• • Miller 2010, p. 393.
• • "Memorials to the Armenian Genocide". Armenian National Institute. Archived from the
original on 9 August 2017. Retrieved 25 February 2021.
• • Dadrian & Akçam 2011, p. 4.
• • Akçam 2012, pp. xxii–xxiii, 25–26.
• • Bloxham & Göçek 2008, p. 345.
• • Chorbajian 2016, p. 168.
• • Akçam 2018, p. 11.
• • de Waal 2015, pp. 132–133.
• • Ihrig 2016, pp. 9, 370–371.

343. • Suny 2015, pp. 374–375.

Sources

Books

• Akçam, Taner (2012). The Young Turks' Crime against Humanity: The Armenian
Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire. Princeton University Press.
ISBN 978-0-691-15333-9.
• Akçam, Taner (2018). Killing Orders: Talat Pasha's Telegrams and the Armenian
Genocide. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-3-319-69787-1.
• Akçam, Taner; Kurt, Ümit (2015). The Spirit of the Laws: The Plunder of Wealth in the
Armenian Genocide. Berghahn Books. ISBN 978-1-78238-624-7.
• Bloxham, Donald (2005). The Great Game of Genocide: Imperialism, Nationalism, and
the Destruction of the Ottoman Armenians. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-
927356-0.
• Bozarslan, Hamit; Duclert, Vincent; Kévorkian, Raymond H. (2015). Comprendre le
génocide des arméniens – 1915 à nos jours [Understanding the Armenian genocide:
1915 to the present day] (in French). Tallandier [fr]. ISBN 979-10-210-0681-2.
• Cheterian, Vicken (2015). Open Wounds: Armenians, Turks and a Century of Genocide.
Hurst. ISBN 978-1-84904-458-5.
• Dadrian, Vahakn N.; Akçam, Taner (2011). Judgment At Istanbul: The Armenian
Genocide Trials. Berghahn Books. ISBN 978-0-85745-286-3.
• de Waal, Thomas (2015). Great Catastrophe: Armenians and Turks in the Shadow of
Genocide. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-935069-8.
• Galip, Özlem Belçim (2020). New Social Movements and the Armenian Question in
Turkey: Civil Society vs. the State. Springer International Publishing. ISBN 978-3-030-
59400-8.
• Gingeras, Ryan (2016). Fall of the Sultanate: The Great War and the End of the Ottoman
Empire 1908–1922. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-967607-1.
• Göçek, Fatma Müge (2015). Denial of Violence: Ottoman Past, Turkish Present and
Collective Violence Against the Armenians, 1789–2009. Oxford University Press.
ISBN 978-0-19-933420-9.
• Ihrig, Stefan (2016). Justifying Genocide: Germany and the Armenians from Bismarck to
Hitler. Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-50479-0.
 • Kévorkian, Raymond (2011). The Armenian Genocide: A Complete History. I.B. Tauris.
ISBN 978-0-85771-930-0.
• Kieser, Hans-Lukas (2018). Talaat Pasha: Father of Modern Turkey, Architect of
Genocide. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-1-4008-8963-1.
• Morris, Benny; Ze'evi, Dror (2019). The Thirty-Year Genocide: Turkey's Destruction of
Its Christian Minorities, 1894–1924. Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-91645-
6.
• Nichanian, Mikaël (2015). Détruire les Arméniens. Histoire d'un génocide [Destroying
the Armenians: History of a Genocide] (in French). Presses Universitaires de France.
ISBN 978-2-13-062617-6.
• Payaslian, Simon (2007). The History of Armenia: From the Origins to the Present.
Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-1-4039-7467-9.
• Rogan, Eugene (2015). The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East.
Basic Books. ISBN 978-0-465-05669-9.
• Suciyan, Talin (2015). The Armenians in Modern Turkey: Post-Genocide Society, Politics
and History. I.B. Tauris. ISBN 978-0-85772-773-2.
• Suny, Ronald Grigor (2015). "They Can Live in the Desert but Nowhere Else": A History
of the Armenian Genocide. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-1-4008-6558-1.
• Üngör, Uğur Ümit; Polatel, Mehmet (2011). Confiscation and Destruction: The Young
Turk Seizure of Armenian Property. Continuum. ISBN 978-1-4411-3578-0.

Chapters

• Ahmed, Ali (2006). "Turkey". Encyclopedia of the Developing World. Routledge.

pp. 1575–1578. ISBN 978-1-57958-388-0.
• Anderson, Margaret Lavinia (2011). "Who Still Talked about the Extermination of the
Armenians?". A Question of Genocide: Armenians and Turks at the End of the Ottoman
Empire. Oxford University Press. pp. 199–217. ISBN 978-0-19-539374-3.
• Astourian, Stephan (2011). "The Silence of the Land: Agrarian Relations, Ethnicity, and
Power". A Question of Genocide: Armenians and Turks at the End of the Ottoman
Empire. Oxford University Press. pp. 55–81. ISBN 978-0-19-539374-3.
• Bloxham, Donald; Göçek, Fatma Müge (2008). "The Armenian Genocide". The
Historiography of Genocide. Palgrave Macmillan UK. pp. 344–372. ISBN 978-0-230-
29778-4.
• Chorbajian, Levon (2016). "'They Brought It on Themselves and It Never Happened':
Denial to 1939". The Armenian Genocide Legacy. Palgrave Macmillan UK. pp. 167–182.
ISBN 978-1-137-56163-3.
• Cora, Yaşar Tolga (2020). "Towards a Social History of the Ottoman War Economy:
Manufacturing and Armenian Forced Skilled-Laborers". Not All Quiet on the Ottoman
Fronts: Neglected Perspectives on a Global War, 1914–1918. Ergon-Verlag. pp. 49–72.
ISBN 978-3-95650-777-9.
• Der Mugrdechian, Barlow (2016). "The Theme of Genocide in Armenian Literature". The
Armenian Genocide Legacy. Palgrave Macmillan UK. pp. 273–286. ISBN 978-1-137-
56163-3.
• Dündar, Fuat (2011). "Pouring a People into the Desert: The "Definitive Solution" of the
Unionists to the Armenian Question". A Question of Genocide: Armenians and Turks at
 the End of the Ottoman Empire. Oxford University Press. pp. 276–286. ISBN 978-0-19-
539374-3.
• Göçek, Fatma Müge (2011). "Reading Genocide: Turkish Historiography on 1915". A
Question of Genocide: Armenians and Turks at the End of the Ottoman Empire. Oxford
University Press. pp. 42–52. ISBN 978-0-19-539374-3.
• Kaiser, Hilmar (2010). "Genocide at the Twilight of the Ottoman Empire". The Oxford
Handbook of Genocide Studies. Oxford University Press. pp. 365–385. ISBN 978-0-19-
923211-6.
• Kaligian, Dikran (2017). "Convulsions at the End of Empire: Thrace, Asia Minor, and
the Aegean". Genocide in the Ottoman Empire: Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks,
1913–1923. Berghahn Books. pp. 82–104. ISBN 978-1-78533-433-7.
• Kévorkian, Raymond (2014). "Earth, Fire, Water: or How to Make the Armenian
Corpses Disappear". Destruction and Human Remains: Disposal and Concealment in
Genocide and Mass Violence. Manchester University Press. pp. 89–116. ISBN 978-1-
84779-906-7. JSTOR j.ctt1wn0s3n.9.
• Kévorkian, Raymond (2020). "The Final Phase: The Cleansing of Armenian and Greek
Survivors, 1919–1922". Collective and State Violence in Turkey: The Construction of a
National Identity from Empire to Nation-State. Berghahn Books. pp. 147–173. ISBN 978-
1-78920-451-3.
• Kieser, Hans-Lukas; Bloxham, Donald (2014). "Genocide". The Cambridge History of
the First World War: Volume 1: Global War. Cambridge University Press. pp. 585–614.
ISBN 978-0-511-67566-9.
• Koinova, Maria (2017). "Conflict and Cooperation in Armenian Diaspora Mobilisation
for Genocide Recognition". Diaspora as Cultures of Cooperation: Global and Local
Perspectives. Springer International Publishing. pp. 111–129. ISBN 978-3-319-32892-8.
• Leonard, Thomas C. (2004). "When news is not enough: American media and Armenian
deaths". America and the Armenian Genocide of 1915. Cambridge University Press.
pp. 294–308. ISBN 978-0-521-82958-8.
• Maksudyan, Nazan (2020). "The Orphan Nation: Gendered Humanitarianism for
Armenian Survivor Children in Istanbul, 1919–1922". Gendering Global
Humanitarianism in the Twentieth Century: Practice, Politics and the Power of
Representation. Springer International Publishing. pp. 117–142. ISBN 978-3-030-44630-
7.
• Marsoobian, Armen (2016). "The Armenian Genocide in Film: Overcoming Denial and
Loss". The History of Genocide in Cinema: Atrocities on Screen. Bloomsbury Publishing.
pp. 73–86. ISBN 978-1-78673-047-3.
• Mouradian, Khatchig (2018). "Internment and destruction: Concentration camps during
the Armenian genocide, 1915–16". Internment during the First World War: A Mass
Global Phenomenon. Routledge. pp. 145–161. ISBN 978-1-315-22591-3.
• Üngör, Uğur Ümit (2012). "The Armenian Genocide, 1915" (PDF). Holocaust and Other
Genocides (PDF). NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies / Amsterdam
University Press. pp. 45–72. ISBN 978-90-4851-528-8.
• Üngör, Uğur Ümit (2016). "The Armenian Genocide in the Context of 20th-Century
Paramilitarism". The Armenian Genocide Legacy. Palgrave Macmillan UK. pp. 11–25.
ISBN 978-1-137-56163-3.
 • Zürcher, Erik Jan (2011). "Renewal and Silence: Postwar Unionist and Kemalist
Rhetoric on the Armenian Genocide". A Question of Genocide: Armenians and Turks at
the End of the Ottoman Empire. Oxford University Press. pp. 306–316. ISBN 978-0-19-
539374-3.

Journal articles

• Akçam, Taner (2019). "When Was the Decision to Annihilate the Armenians Taken?".
Journal of Genocide Research. 21 (4): 457–480. doi:10.1080/14623528.2019.1630893.
• Ben Aharon, Eldad (2019). "Recognition of the Armenian Genocide after its Centenary:
A Comparative Analysis of Changing Parliamentary Positions". Israel Journal of
Foreign Affairs. 13 (3): 339–352. doi:10.1080/23739770.2019.1737911.
• Bjørnlund, Matthias (2008). "The 1914 cleansing of Aegean Greeks as a case of violent
Turkification". Journal of Genocide Research. 10 (1): 41–58.
doi:10.1080/14623520701850286.
• Ekmekçioğlu, Lerna (2013). "A Climate for Abduction, a Climate for Redemption: The
Politics of Inclusion during and after the Armenian Genocide". Comparative Studies in
Society and History. 55 (3): 522–553. doi:10.1017/S0010417513000236.
hdl:1721.1/88911. ISSN 0010-4175. JSTOR 23526015.
• Kaiser, Hilmar (2019). "Financing the Ruling Party and Its Militants in Wartime:The
Armenian Genocide and the Kemah Massacres of 1915". Études arméniennes
contemporaines (12): 7–31. doi:10.4000/eac.1942. Archived from the original on 21
April 2021. Retrieved 30 May 2021.
• Kurt, Ümit (2016). "Cultural Erasure: The Absorption and Forced Conversion of
Armenian Women and Children, 1915–1916". Études arméniennes contemporaines (7).
doi:10.4000/eac.997. ISSN 2269-5281. Archived from the original on 28 July 2020.
Retrieved 17 June 2021.
• Miller, Angela (2010). "Achilles the Bitter: Gorky and the Genocide". Oxford Art
Journal. 33 (3): 392–396. doi:10.1093/oxartj/kcq025.
• Shirinian, George N. (2017). "Starvation and Its Political Use in the Armenian
Genocide". Genocide Studies International. 11 (1): 8–37. doi:10.3138/gsi.11.1.01.
• Tusan, Michelle (2014). ""Crimes against Humanity": Human Rights, the British Empire,
and the Origins of the Response to the Armenian Genocide". The American Historical
Review. 119 (1): 47–77. doi:10.1093/ahr/119.1.47.
• Watenpaugh, Keith David (2013). ""Are There Any Children for Sale?": Genocide and
the Transfer of Armenian Children (1915–1922)". Journal of Human Rights. 12 (3): 283–
295. doi:10.1080/14754835.2013.812410.