Human Conflict Project

All events · The World Wars

The Armenian Genocide

1915–1923 · Balkans, Anatolia & the Caucasus

Displacement Territory Seized Mass Killing Sexual Violence Abduction (Children) Killing was the defining act
Displaced
1.2 million
Peter Gatrell, writing in 1914-1918-Online, puts the number of Armenians deported at about 1.2 million and records that of roughly 850,000 deportees only some 300,000 were alive in early 1916. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum describes deportations from the six eastern provinces spreading to virtually the whole empire. The figures rest on Ottoman administrative and interior ministry records, German and American diplomatic reporting, missionary and Near East Relief records, and the postwar Ottoman courts-martial files, and are reconstructed rather than counted.
Share of the population affected
60%
of the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire on the eve of the genocide, 1914
Killed
0.6–1.5 million
direct killing

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What happened

On 24 April 1915 the Ottoman authorities arrested several hundred Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople, and from May the government ordered the deportation of the Armenian population of the eastern provinces, a policy given legal form by the Temporary Law of Deportation of 27 May 1915 and extended over the following months to almost the whole empire. Columns of deportees were marched south through Anatolia to holding camps along the Euphrates around Deir ez-Zor; convoys were robbed, women and children were abducted, and large numbers were killed outright or died of hunger, thirst and disease. Ronald Grigor Suny, writing in 1914-1918-Online, gives a conservative estimate of 600,000 to 1 million killed or dead on the marches; the USHMM states that at least 664,000 and possibly as many as 1.2 million died; the Armenian National Institute and many states use the figure of 1.5 million for the period 1915-1923. Postwar Ottoman courts-martial in 1919-20 convicted leading Unionists in absentia. The Republic of Turkey rejects the characterisation of the events as genocide, describing them as wartime relocation with heavy mortality on all sides, while more than thirty states, the European Parliament, the International Association of Genocide Scholars and, since 2019 and 2021, the United States Congress and President have recognised them as genocide.

Parties

The Ottoman government under the Committee of Union and Progress arrested the Armenian leadership, deported the Armenian population of Anatolia into the Syrian desert, and confiscated its property; killings were carried out by gendarmes, the Special Organisation and irregulars

Disputed

Turkey disputes both the characterisation as genocide and the higher death tolls, arguing that the deportations were a security measure in wartime and that Muslim civilians died in comparable numbers; Armenian institutions and most genocide scholars hold that the deportations were intended to destroy the Armenian population, and the death toll itself ranges in serious scholarship from about 600,000 to 1.5 million.

The denominator

The figure is contested and politically charged. The Armenian Patriarchate's 1913-14 count gave about 2.1 million in some 2,925 towns and villages; Ottoman government statistics gave about 1.2-1.3 million; Arnold Toynbee and most later historians settle between 1.6 and 2.1 million. Recent scholarship generally states that around two million Armenians lived in Ottoman territory within a total Anatolian population of 15-17.5 million.

The denominator is itself disputed — Ottoman figures are roughly 40 per cent lower than Armenian ones — so the share killed swings between about two-thirds and nearly the whole population depending on which count is used.

Where the baseline comes from

On the death toll

Suny's article for 1914-1918-Online gives a conservative range of 600,000 to 1 million and favours 600,000-800,000 killed; the USHMM gives at least 664,000 and possibly 1.2 million; the Armenian National Institute and the recognising resolutions of many parliaments use 1.5 million for 1915-1923. The disagreement turns on the pre-war Armenian population, which Ottoman censuses and the Armenian Patriarchate counted differently, on whether deaths after 1918 and forced converts are included, and on how deaths from starvation and disease during deportation are classified. Turkish official accounts give far lower figures and attribute the deaths chiefly to wartime conditions.

Documented forms of violence

Mass KillingSummary ExecutionSexual ViolenceAbduction of ChildrenForced LabourStarvation and SiegeDestruction of PropertyCultural DestructionDenationalization

These forms are documented in Ottoman interior ministry and courts-martial records, in German and American consular reporting collected by Ambassador Morgenthau and by Johannes Lepsius, and in Near East Relief and missionary archives, and are set out in the USHMM and 1914-1918-Online accounts.

Formal findings

Movements mapped

Countries touched, on present-day borders

Turkey, Syria, Armenia

Sources

← EarlierThe Sayfo: The Assyrian, Syriac and Chaldean Genocide Later →The Great Famine of Mount Lebanon and Ottoman Syria