ARMENIANS IN THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE AND MODERN TURKEY
(1912—1926)
THE ANATOLIAN ARMENIANS, 1912—1922
JUSTIN McCARTHY
In discussing an issue as volatile as the status of the Ottoman Armenians, it is important
to define terms. By “Armenian,” I mean those Ottoman citizens who were Armenian in
religion — Gregorian, Catholic, or Protestant Armenians. Following modern usage, it
would be more common to define Armenians as those who spoke Armenian as their mother
tongue. However, a great number of the Anatolian Armenians, perhaps the majority, did not
speak Armenian as their first language and, in any case, the Ottoman Empire kept
population records by religion, not language. Given the sense of religious identification
of, the Ottoman peoples, religion is a very accurate criterion by which to label Ottoman
population groups. By “Armenian,” I most definitely do not mean any standard of
so-called race or “blood.” Such categories are, at best, undefinable and, at worst,
racist.
The period is 1912 to 1922, a period of national disaster for both Armenians and Turks.
(i)
On Map One you see Ottoman Anatolia and the area traditionally called the Six Vilâyets
— the provinces of Eastern Anatolia that made up the Armenian homeland — Sivas,
Erzurum, Mamuretulaziz, Bitlis, Diyarbakir, and Van. One can also include as traditional
areas of Armenian settlement Trabzon in the north and the two southern provinces which are
often called Cilicia — Adana and Halep (Aleppo).
The generally accepted version of the history of the Anatolian Armenians from 1912 to 1922
has been little questioned. In fact, the story of the Anatolian Armenians is one of the
few bits of Middle Eastern history that is widely “known” in Europe and America.
Brought up on stories of starving Armenians, Westerners have taken as given that the
Armenians were driven from Armenia — a land in which Armenians were the chief
inhabitants — and accepted without proof that Armenians were slaughtered by Turks who,
while not suffering themselves, got away with their crimes. Perhaps because so many people
have previously accepted this story, few today have questioned its vaIidity. However, when
scholars actually investigate the history of Armenians, a different picture emerges. The
actual events of 1912 to 1922 were very different than they have been portrayed.
In investigating the true history of the Anatolian Armenians, the questions asked by
researchers should be on the subjects that have been longest accepted as unquestionably
true — the existence of a land of Armenia and the fate of the Anatolian Armenians in
World War I, i.e., was there an Armenia and what happened to the Armenians (and to the
other Anatolians)? Research into the history of the population of Anatolia answers both
questions.
It is a great temptation for demographers to offer stacks of numbers, pages of relatively
undecipherable statistics.
Although I often find myself giving in to this temptation, I have resisted here. Instead
of tables, I offer maps—pictures and illustrations—rather than numbers. I do not
include demographic calculations, nor do I attempt to prove the correctness of my
statistics. My book on the population of Ottoman Anatolia Muslims and Minorities [New
York, 1983], contains proofs that the statistics are correct. I should mention, however,
that the figures presented here are drawn from the population registration system of the
Ottoman government. The figures have been corrected for the Ottoman undercount of women
and children, a common phenomenon with the Ottomans, as it is with developing countries
today.
(ii)
Was there an Ottoman Armenia, that is, an area in
which the majority of the population were Armenians? For the period before the nineteenth
century there is no way to know for certain. No one took a census, no one registered the
population. We know that places called Greater Armenia, Lesser Armenia, and various other
names existed, but these were the names of kingdoms and kings. Were most of the people in
these kingdoms Armenians? We will never know, but there is reason for doubt. For example,
in areas of the Armenian kingdoms there were great numbers of Kurds at least as far back
as Xenophon and probably earlier.
We do know that in the period of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,
Armenians were a distinct minority in every province of the Ottoman Empire. Map Two
indicates the relative numbers of Armenians, Muslims, and others in the Anatolian
provinces in the year 1912. I have chosen 1912 because the Ottoman statistics for that
year were particularly good and because 1912 was the date given for the often quoted but
grossly inaccurate “Armenian Patriarchate Statistics.” The year 1912 was also
immediately before ten years of war descended on the Anatolians, thus statistics for that
period provide an accurate picture of Anatolia before the disaster.
Looking at Map Two, you notice that in every province of Anatolia approximately two-thirds
or more of the people were Muslims. In the eastern provinces there were large proportions
of Armenians. In Bitlis 31% of the population were Armenians; in the province of Van 26%
were Armenians. However, even in these two provinces, the Muslim population was twice that
of the Armenians. Bitlis was 67% Muslim, Van 61%. In the Six Vilayets as a whole, Muslims
outnumbered Armenians 4.5 to 1.
Part of the reason for the low numbers of Armenians in the East was the dispersion of the
Armenian people. Armenians had been migrating for centuries, a movement that continued
well into modern times. Of course, Armenians had moved into Russian Armenia. They had
begun to leave Anatolia in large numbers in the time of the 1827-28 Turco-Russian War and
had continued to move throughout the period of the 1877-78 war. In Russia, the Anatolian
Armenians took the place of Turks and other Muslims who had been forced by the Russians to
migrate into the Ottoman Empire.
The Armenians who remained in the Ottoman Empire dispersed themselves throughout the
Ottoman lands. On Map Three you see an Armenian population that, while surely strongest in
the East, was spread across Anatolia. Had Istanbul and Ottoman Europe been included in the
map, they, too, would have shown sizeable Armenian populations. There were more Armenians
in the province of Ankara, in the center of Anatolia, than in Mamuretulaziz or Diyarbakir
in the East. The Western Anatolian province of Hudavendigar (Bursa), far from the Armenian
homeland, contained more Armenians than Diyarbakir in the East and more than either Adana
or Halep in Cilicia. Istanbul and Edirne provinces, not on the map, had approximately
125,000 Armenians; of the “Armenian Provinces” only Erzurum, Van, and Bitlis had more.
Another, perhaps better, way to view the Armenian dispersion across Anatolia is simply to
calculate the density of settlement of Ottoman Armenians. Province sizes varied, so
statistics on the absolute numbers of Armenians in provinces can be slightly deceptive.
Density, on the other hand, indicates “how thick they were on the ground” and says
much on the relative strength of the various Anatolian Armenian communities. An area with
one million Armenians spread over 100,000 square kilometers would be much less “Armenian”
than an area with only 200,000 Armenians in 10,000 square kilometers. You will notice on
Map Four that the thickest regional settlement of Armenians was indeed in the southeast of
Anatolia — in Bitlis Vilâyeti (5.9 per square kilometer), in Mamuretulaziz (3.8 per
square kilometer), in Van (3.5 per square kilometer). You will also notice, once again,
that Armenians were spread across Anatolia. Most interestingly, it was in the province of
Izmit, in far northwestern Anatolia, not in historic Armenia, that the Armenian population
most dense. Armenians in Izmit were 8.2 per square kilometer, more than twice as dense as
the average density in the Six Vilâyets.
The implications of the Armenian dispersion to aspirations for an Armenian homeland in
Anatolia are significant. On the basis of self-determination, there was no Armenia.
Armenians, like the other millets, were spread throughout the Ottoman Empire. It can be
asserted, of course, that had an Armenian state been granted in the Six Vilâyets,
Armenians would have returned there from other parts of the Empire, but I find this
doubtful. Istanbul, lzmit, and Bursa were more comfortable places to live than Van, Bitlis,
and Mamuretulaziz, and I doubt if great numbers of Armenians would have gone east.
Nevertheless, if all the Anatolian Armenians had migrated to the Six Vilayets, Muslims in
the Six ViIayets would have outnumbered Armenians by more than 2.5 to 1. If all the
Armenians in the world had moved to the Six Vilayets, Muslims would still have been a
majority. There were simply too few Armenians for a viable state.
(iii)
To understand the end of the Armenian presence in Anatolia, one must
remember that the Armenian disaster came in time of war — World War I and the Turkish
War of Independence. The numbers used by demographers are of limited use in describing
war. They will not tell us who fired the first shot, or label those responsible for the
bIoodshed. They only count the dead. Yet, much can be learned from the numbers of the
dead. We now know from reliable statistics that slightly less than 600,000 Anatolian
Armenians died in the wars of 1912-22, not 1.5 or 2 million, as is often claimed. Not that
600,000 is a small number. The Armenians suffered a terrible mortality. But when
considering the numbers of dead Armenians, one must also consider the numbers of dead
Muslims. The statistics tell us that 2.5 million Anatolian Muslims died as well, most of
them Turks. In the Six Vilâyets, the Armenian homeland, more than one million Muslims
died. These Muslims, no less than the Armenians, suffered a terrible mortality.
The numbers do not tell us the exact manner of death of the citizens of Anatolia. Civil
war, forced migration of both Muslims and Armenians, inter-communal warfare, disease, and,
specially starvation are listed in the documents of the time as causes of death. The
Anatolian mortality was not simply the deaths of soldiers in wartime, but deaths of men,
women, and children — Armenian and Muslim — who were caught up in international war
between Russians and Ottomans and inter-communal war between Armenians and Muslims. We
know from both documentary evidence and statistics that inter-communal warfare between
Christians and Muslims was a major cause of death. The province of Sivas, for example, was
not in the war zone; the Russian army never reached that far. 180,000 of the Muslims of
Sivas died. The same was true of the rest of Anatolia. In the end, statistics of mortality
show that Armenians suffered greatly, but not that they suffered alone. The statistics
indicate that the years 1912-22 were a horrible time for humanity, not simply for
Armenians.
The conventional wisdom that ‘knows’ that Anatolian Armenians died has always
neglected to consider that Muslims died as well. As with the supposed existence of an
Armenia, the commonly accepted history of what happened to the Armenians has not been
correct. The lesson to be learned is an old one: History should not be partisan. I believe
that it is time that we consider the events of 1912-22 for what they were, a human
disaster. It is time to stop labeling them as a sectarian suffering that demands revenge.