The following is from the book, "Ermeni Meselesenin Siyasi Tarihcesi" [The Political History of the Armenian Problem] (1877-1914). The 2001 publication from Ankara documents how the person in charge of the Ottoman Archives from those early years, Munir Surreya Bey, kept a record of important communications relating to the history of events leading to the Armenian "Genocide." Most of the book provides photocopies of the actual documents.

As far as I could understand (the book is in Turkish and French), conditions were imposed on the Turks after having lost the Russo-Turkish war (1877 - 78)... and the Turks provided a paper on how concessions to the Armenians would be granted, according to talks that took place during the Berlin Conference (1878) . The ambassadors of Germany (V. Hatzfeld), France (Th. Tissol), England (Goschen), Russia (Novicow), Austria-Hungary (De Calice) and Italy (L. Corti) were not happy with the report.

At any rate, one of the papers provided was the following census of the Armenians in the Six Vilayets (Van, Diyarbakir, Bitlis, Erzurum, and... Harput? I believe the sixth is Trabzon), from 1880. The total for the Armenians is shown as 780,800... some thirty-five years before the first year of the Armenian "Genocide."