User:Fadix/Ottoman Armenian Casualties

The estimation of Armenian deaths between 1914 to 1923 during what is called the Armenian genocide and what followed as the Turkish war of independence is a subject of controversy. Most estimations for the losses between 1915 to 1917-18 range from 600,000 to 1.5 million. This article present some statistics of the Armenian deaths during the last years of Ottoman Empire.

Armenian casualties from 1914 to 1917-18

Ottoman and Turkish estimates

The Official Ottoman statistics

The official Ottoman statistics compiled, for the period between 1915 to 1917-18, were of 800,000 killed, which suggest that possibly over a million perished. This figure originates from Djemal's bureau’s compilation statistics. The results have been published in the official Ottoman gazette.¹

It was allegedly the result of a commission formed by the interior minister Mustafa Arif. It is said that they relied on reports and statistics they have compiled in a period of two months, in March 14, 1919, the results were made public by Djemal. This same figure has been mentioned in Rauf Orbay's own memoirs.² The initial results apparently represented, those that were “massacred” during the deportation, without any indication as to the total number of people having perished; Mustafa Kemal during a conversation he had with Major General Harbord the chief of the American Military Mission to Armenia in September 1919 repeated the same number.³

However, following the dissolution of the military tribunal, those figures were reinterpreted continuously as to finally represent the total number of Armenian casualties. The Turkish author Taner Akçam refers to a Turkish military published by Lt. Col. Nihat in 1928, in which the figure of 800,000 did not any more represent those as “massacred” or “killed” but simply perished. Then, the historian Bayur in famous work wrote: "800,000 Armenians and 200,000 Greeks died as a result of deportations or died in labor brigades." And concluded: “According to our official sources, these numbers are correct."⁴

Other Ottoman sources

While the official figures were of 800,000 killed, there were many unofficial numbers presented during the war by some Ottoman authorities, Talat for instance presented the figure of 300,000, but there are no indication as to how those figures were obtained. And this figure is currently the one used often by the Turkish government officials.

Justin McCarthy estimates

Justin McCarthys figures are often referred in various works, more particularly works which are considered by some to be supporting the Turkish government theses that the Armenian massacres do not constitute genocide.

Even though professor Justin McCarthy is a Western academic, his numbers of Armenian casualties are derived from his statistics of Armenian population which in their turn were derived from Ottoman record(by applying correction values), therefore, some scholars considers them Ottoman sources rather than a Western one. The way he proceeded is to subtract from his figures of Armenian population, the figure he calculated as survivors. And came to a little less than 600,000 as Armenian casualties for the period 1914 to 1922.⁵ But as in the cases of his population his statistics are controversial. In a more recent essay of his, he project that if the Armenian records of 1913 were accurate, 250,000 more deaths should be added,⁶ for a total of 850,000. McCarthy figures as well doesn't include the Armenian population losses from the Russian Armenia lands loss in the profit of the Ottoman Empire, and he is as well criticized of overestimating the survivor table. Frédéric Paulin goes as far as comparing his methodology with Rassiniers method in calculating the European Jewry losses during World War II.⁷

Ottoman allies estimates

Germany

Of all the nations involved during the war, Germany is considered by many to be the best placed besides the Ottoman Empire, to have access to most of the deportation and murder sites. Some consider this to be the reason why, from all the nations, Germany seemed to provide the most complete and highest estimates of Armenian losses during the war.

A report provided that as soon as February 1916, 1.5 million Armenians were destroyed,⁸ it might have been considered as an over-estimation, but a report in May 27, 1916, by the Foreign Office Intelligence Director, Erzberger, provided the same figure.⁹ This was followed with a October 4, 1916 report, by the German Interim Ambassador to Turkey, Radowitz, again with 1.5 million as the estimate of Armenian's having perished.¹⁰ It seems that the generally cited 1.5 million figure had originated from those German sources. What might be considered by many, one of the most balanced German account, is those of the German major Endres, who served in the Turkish army, and who has estimated the number of Armenian's having lost their lives during the war to be 1.2 million.¹¹ The same figure was mentioned during the Yozgat trial,¹² as well as presented during the Permanent Peoples Tribunal¹³ and often cited elsewhere.

Austria-Hungry

While, Austria did not present wide ranges of statistics and estimates, some exists.

The Austrian consul at Trabzon and Samsun, Dr. Kwatkiowski on March 13, 1918 reported to Vienna restricting himself to the six eastern provinces, Trabzon and Samsun district, that from the million deported, most died, while Austria-Hungary's Adrianople (Edirne) consul Dr. Nadamlenzki reported that for the entire Ottoman Empire 1.5 million were already deported.¹⁴ The Austrian Vice Marashal Pomiankowski estimated the Armenian losses to be about a million.¹⁵

The allies and neutral parties

Contrary to the Ottoman official statistics, and German wide ranges of figures, most of the allies' statistics of Armenian losses were incomplete. The reason is believed to be the allies limited access to reliable sources of information within the Empire, being the “enemy” sides, they were more restricted to investigate. But still, it is important to note that there were wildly used sources.

One of those, was Toynbee numbers. He presented 600,000 for 1915,¹⁶ while his work is considered by many to be well researched, it doesn't includes the Armenian victims from 1916 to 1917-18, as professor Melson writes: "Toynbee’s description and analysis stop with the winter of 1915 and the spring of 1916, by which time the bulk of the Armenian population has been killed or deported. As valuable as it is, this work cannot take into account what subsequently happened to the deportees in 1916, nor can it take into account the Armenians who were deported from some of the major urban areas after 1916."¹⁷

Another sources of information widely used is the King Crane Commission, but with conflicting numbers, a million is presented as losses during the war in one cases in the same work, but in the same commission, it is reported that the Hamidian massacres are included. Wherever or not, the Armenian casualties were under evaluated to increase purposely the Armenian population to support the foundation of an Armenia is still a matter of debate, since the Armenian losses of a million during the war has been added for what the commission call "justice" in one cases, and in what regards the Armenian population, the Adana massacres, and Hamidian massacres resulting to what appears to be an attempt of population maximization.¹⁸ The Armenian estimates were on the same direction. At times, they were even as low as 500,000¹⁹ when the Armenian high mortality was threatening the possibility of founding an Armenia compromising as well of Ottoman territories, and in other instances to over a million.²⁰ The Unites-States figures for the period between 1915 to 1917 varies widely, but most figures contend to a million or over. The League of Nations, provided a million as a figure,²¹ but the list of refugees in the Caucasus and Russian Armenia who were not from Ottoman Empire was not clearly defined, which suggest that the list of 400,000 to 420,000 Ottoman Armenian's²² could have contained Armenian's who were possibly not in proper term Ottoman Armenian, which may explain why other estimates projected the casualties over the million drawn by the League.

Armenian casualties from 1917-18 to 1923

While the Ottoman official statistics covered 1917-18, and some of German figures, most other figures excluded them. Another problem remains, as to the availability of the sources for what followed 1917. More recent scholars have called this period the second phase of what is called the ]]Armenian Genocide]]. Melson, for instance, provide' a rough estimate of 500,000.²³ On the other hand, those estimates have no archival grounds, for this reason some researchers considers any such figures could be near to the actual casualty figures or far from it.

Armenian casualties outside of the Ottoman borders during Ottoman invasion

Few commissions were formed though, such as the investigations for Kars and Alexandropol. The Alexandropol investigation by its nature is seen as the most serious such endeavor. It presented 60,000 as directed killed, in a total of 150,000 victims which condition would have ultimately led to their death sentences.²⁴ But the investigation apparently came to an end abruptly. The Germans on the other hand, not presenting any numbers, have reported Russian Armenia condition, in what they considered as an Ottoman attempt to destroy it.²⁵ Without taking in account the Ottoman excursion of what was considered as Persian Armenia.

Ottoman Armenian casualties

Most of the victims could be counted in Cilicia,²⁶ as well as the Eastern zone, and without ignoring Smyrna(Izmir)²⁷ during what was reported as massacres and what followed with the burning of the Armenian and Greek quarter of the city. While the total of casualties in this category is estimated to tens of thousands to over hundred of thousand, the number of victims is not well established.

Total of the Armenian casualties from 1914 to 1923

While there is no clear consensus as to how many Armenian's have lost their live during what is called the Armenian genocide and what followed, there seem to be a consensus among Western scholars with the exception of few dissident and Turkish national historians, as to when covering all the period between 1914 to 1923, over a million Armenian might have perished, and the tendency seem recently to be, either presenting 1,2 million as figure or even 1,5 million, while more moderately, "over a million" is presented,²⁸ as the Turkish historian Fikret Adanir provides as estimation, but excludes what followed 1917.

Armenian casualties revisited

Far from finding the exact figure of Armenian casualties, some researchers have at least tried to provide some figures of losses during the war and what followed based on some sources. But most of it is rough estimates or are based on calculations of others. An example here might be the cases of Justin McCarthy, since he is one of the rare researcher that has worked with Ottoman records, various Ottomanists have recycled his figures. But over the years, the numbers of books using his statistics have declined greatly, it is believed that what many scholars consider as a biases from his part has influenced authors to use other less controversial figures.

Footnotes

¹Ottoman Gazette Takvimi Vekâyi No. 3909, July 21, 1920, pp. 3, 4. Cited published in Alemdar, March 15, 1919

²Rauf Orbay, Rauf Orbay'ın Hatıraları, (Vol. 3), Yakın Tarihimiz, İstanbul, 1962 p. 179, he writes as to what Mustafa Kemal told him about the Armenians.

³Yakm Tarihimiz, 3, (1962), p. 179, cited in Vahakn N. Dadrian, The History of the Armenian Genocide: Ethnic Conflict from the Balkans to Anatolia to the Caucasus, Providence, RI: Berghan Books, 1995, p. 234

⁴Yusuf Hikmet Bayur, Türk Inkilabi Tarihi, Vol. III, Sec. IV, p. 787

⁵Justin McCarthy, The End of Ottoman Anatolia, in Muslims and Minorities: The Population of Ottoman Anatolia and the End of the Empire, New York Univ. Press, 1983.

⁶Justin McCarthy, The Armenians in the Late Ottoman Period, in The Armenians in the Late Ottoman Period, The Turkish Historical Society For The Council Of Culture, Arts And Publications Of The Grand National Assembly Of Turkey, Ankara, 2001, pp. 65-86

⁷Frédéric Paulin, Négationnisme et théorie des populations stables : le cas du génocide arménien, in Hervé Lebras (dir.), L’Invention des populations. Biologie, Idéologie et politique, Editions Odile Jacob, 2000.

⁸Written on July 2,1916 and submitted to the Foreign Office on July 14, 1916 titled: Volkswirtschaftliche Studien in der Türkei, A. A. Türkei, 134/35, A18613.

⁹A.A. Türkei 183/42, A13959, May 27, 1916 report.

¹⁰A.A. Türkei 183/44. A27493, October 4, 1916 report.

¹¹Carl Franz Endres, Die Türkei. Munich, CH Beck, 1918, p. 161

¹²Cited in Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Volume 11, Number 1, Spring 1997, Vahakn N. Dadrian, The Turkish Military Tribunal's Prosecution of the Authors of the Armenian Genocide: Four Major Court-Martial Series, Genocide Study Project, H. F. Guggenheim Foundation.

¹³Gérard Chaliand, Le Crime de silence : le génocide des Arméniens: Tribunal permanent des peuples, [Session de Paris, 13-16 avril 1984] ; pref. de Pierre Vidal-Naquet, Flammarion, 1984.

¹⁴Austrian Foreign Ministry Archives 12 Türkei/380, ZI.17/pol and 12 Türkei/463, Z.94/P.

¹⁵Joseph Pomiankowski, Der Zusammenbruch des Ottomanischen Reiches, Graz, Austria, 1969, p. 160

¹⁶The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, Documents presented to Viscount Grey of Fallodon, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs By Viscount Bryce, London 1916

¹⁷Robert Melson, Revolution and Genocide: On the Origins of the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust, University Of Chicago Press, October 15, 1992, p. 147

¹⁸Harry N. Howard, The King-Crane Commission: An American Inquiry in the Middle East, Khayats, 1963 p. 212 includes them all, but The King-Crane Commission Report, August 28, 1919 is more conflicting in one instances, where it consider the million as the result of the war,(as if excluding the other massacres) and there is no way to know wherever or not it was a mistake.

¹⁹A. P. Hacobian, Armenia and the War: An Armenian's Point of View with an Appeal to Britain and the Coming Peace Conference, George H. Doran Company, New York. 1918. He presents as range from 500,000 to 800,000, and presents the cases of the possibility of the construction of an Armenia. How far those politically motivated figures influenced commissions reports of mortality, such as those of the King Crane is not well known, apparently it was considered due to Mr. Aharonian and Boghos Nubar presentation of the cases, in this regard, it is relevant to read the British views on the problem of Kurdistan, and on Boghos Nubar Pasha, in December 1919, see United Kingdom, Foreign Office, Documents on British Foreign Policy 1919-1939. Edited by E. L. Woodward and Rohan Butler. First Series ( London, H. M. S. O., 1952), IV, 920-24. Later cited as British Documents, 1919-1939.

²⁰Boghos Nubar, the head of the Armenian delegation at the Paris Peace conference, wrote in The Times of London in 30 January, 1919, that “over a million out of a total Armenian population… have lost their lives in and through the war.” Apparently, when it was noted that a possibility of an Armenia as wanted by the Armenian delegation was impossible, the Armenian delegation changed it's tactic, as to not minimise the number of victims, but rather use them and indirectly accuse the allies, and expect that they might consider Armenia as reparation for the losses.

²¹The extend of the Armenian tragedy is described in Fridtjof Nansen(Nobel Peace Prize and then League of Nations High commissioner) book: “Armenia and the Near East” translted from “l'Arménie et le Proche Orient, Paris, 1923). Nansen conclude his work by the following remarks: "Woe to the Armenians, that they were ever drawn into European politics! It would have been better for them if the name of Armenia had never been uttered by any European diplomatist."

²²See: League of Nations: Assembly: Fifth Committee published reports: Armenian and Russian Refugee Problems; Report... Geneva: np, 1926. Settlement of Armenian Refugees; Report... Geneva: Imprimerie Kundig, 1926. Transfer of Armenian Refugees to the Caucasus and Creation of an Armenian National Home in That Region; Report... Geneva: np, 1924.

²³In his book: Revolution and Genocide: On the Origins of the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust, University Of Chicago Press, October 15, 1992

²⁴Soviet Archival records: CGAKA, f. 109, op. 3, d. 241, 1. 12. / Politarxiv MID SSSR., inv. No. 53351, 1.14. and Arxiv vnesnej politiki SSSR, f. 132, op. 4, p. 6, d. 14, 1. 52.

²⁵Otto von Lossow, Major General, Military attaché reported that the Turkish government was also attempting "the total extermination of the Armenians in Transcaucasia also" (German Foreign Ministry Archives. A. A. Türkei 183/51, A20698, May 15, 1918. His first report.) He also report: "Talàt's government party wants to destroy all Armenians, not only in Turkey, but also outside Turkey."(Deutsches Zentralarchiv (Potsdam) Bestand Reichskanzlei No. 2458/9, Blatt 202, June 3, 1918 report, p. 2.)

²⁶See: Stanley Elphinstone Kerr, The Lions of Marash: Personal Experiences with American Near East Relief, 1919-1922 (New York: State University of New York, 1973); Susan E. Kerr, Letters of Stanley E. Kerr: Volunteer Work with the "Near East Relief" among Armenians in Marash, 1919-1920, Edited and with a Historical Introduction to the Turkish-Armenian Conflict (Diss., History Honors Program, Oberlin College, 1980)

²⁷George Horton, The Blight of Asia, Bobbs-Merril Company, 1926. Also, Dobkin, Marjorie Housepian, SMYRNA 1922: The Destruction of a City, Kent State U Press, 1988.