The Events of 1915: Archives, Legal Criteria and the Fair Memory Proposal

Why It Matters

The Events of 1915 are the wartime relocation of Ottoman Armenians, which Armenia, its diaspora and the parliaments of many states call genocide, and which Türkiye describes as a tragedy with immense loss of life that does not meet the legal definition of genocide. The dispute shapes Türkiye–Armenia normalization, diaspora politics, parliamentary resolutions and the way historians use Ottoman, Armenian and third-country archives. This guide separates documented chronology, legal criteria and each side’s position so readers can judge the evidence themselves.

For how this site distinguishes documented fact from official position, see Editorial Principles: How The Political Accord Separates Fact from Position.

Background

Nearly a millennium of coexistence

Armenians lived in Anatolia under the Great Seljuks, the Anatolian beyliks and, from the 14th–16th centuries onward, the Ottoman Empire. Within the Ottoman millet system, the Armenian community had its own Patriarchate, schools, churches and commercial networks. Ottoman officials and later Turkish historians describe it as the Millet-i Sadıka, the ‘loyal community’, and Armenians served as senior bureaucrats, bankers, architects and diplomats. Western observers such as the Prussian officer Helmuth von Moltke, who served in the Ottoman Empire in 1835–1839, recorded the community’s economic standing.

Turkish sources also stress that Armenians did not form a demographic majority in any eastern Anatolian province, with figures commonly cited at under 20% of the regional population. Armenian historians accept that Armenians were a minority in most provinces but dispute how pre-war population figures were compiled. Estimates of the Ottoman Armenian population before the First World War range from roughly 1.3 million (Ottoman statistics) to about 2.1 million (Armenian Patriarchate figures).

1878 to 1896: Berlin, committees and armed activity

After the 1877–1878 Russo-Turkish War, the 1878 Congress of Berlin placed the Armenian question on the European diplomatic agenda; Article 61 of the Treaty of Berlin committed the Ottoman state to reforms in the ‘provinces inhabited by Armenians’. Turkish accounts argue that the episode taught Armenian leaders, including Patriarch Nerses Varzhapetian and Mkrtich Khrimian, to seek great-power patronage, and that European rivalry politicized the issue.

Two revolutionary organizations then emerged:

• Hunchak (Hunchakian Revolutionary Party), founded in 1887.
• Dashnak (Armenian Revolutionary Federation, Dashnaksutyun), founded in 1890 in Tbilisi.

Both embraced armed struggle. Events cited in Turkish sources include the 1890 Kumkapı demonstration, unrest in Merzifon, Yozgat and Kayseri in 1893, and the Sasun rebellion of 1894. In August 1896 Dashnak members led by Karekin Pastırmacıyan seized the Ottoman Bank in Istanbul. Armenian sources emphasize that the same years, the Hamidian period of 1894–1896, saw large-scale massacres of Armenian civilians, with estimates running into the tens or hundreds of thousands, and that the bank seizure was followed by days of violence against Armenians in Istanbul. Both facts belong in the record. Turkish sources describe armed fedayi bands, including those associated with Antranik, Dro, Paramaz, Hamazasp and Sabah Gülyan, as attacking Ottoman officials and also Armenian civilians and clergy who opposed insurgency.

The First World War

The Ottoman Empire entered the war in October 1914 and faced the Russian Caucasus front, where the Sarıkamış offensive failed in the winter of 1914–1915. Armenian volunteer units formed within the Russian army. Turkish sources argue that these units, together with revolt and sabotage behind Ottoman lines, for instance in Van in April 1915, threatened supply routes, and that irregular Armenian forces committed massacres of Muslim civilians in Van, Erzurum and Bitlis. Armenian sources respond that the volunteers were a small fraction of a population that mostly remained loyal, that Armenians also served in the Ottoman army, and that the Van defence in April 1915 was self-defence against a threat of destruction.

On 24 April 1915, Ottoman authorities arrested several hundred Armenian community leaders and intellectuals in Istanbul. Armenians commemorate this date each year. Ottoman and Turkish accounts describe the arrests as targeting members of committees suspected of organizing against the state. On 24 May 1915, Britain, France and Russia issued a joint declaration condemning ‘crimes against humanity and civilization’ and threatening to hold Ottoman officials personally responsible.

The 1915 Relocation and Resettlement Law

The Ottoman government enacted the Temporary Law on measures to be taken by military authorities against those opposing the government in wartime, usually called the Relocation and Resettlement Law (Sevk ve İskân Kanunu, also Tehcir Kanunu), on 27 May 1915. It was published in Takvim-i Vekayi on 1 June 1915. Follow-on regulations governed the settlement of relocated people and, from September 1915, the handling of abandoned property.

The two sides read the same instrument differently:

• Turkish official view: The law and the correspondence between War Minister Enver Pasha and Interior Minister Talat Pasha show a temporary wartime measure to secure the rear of the army against rebellion and sabotage, with orders to protect relocated people, provide food and shelter, and punish abuses. Ankara points to Ottoman military tribunals that prosecuted Ottoman officials for misconduct during the relocation.
• Armenian and many Western scholarly views: Relocation was applied to Armenian communities far from any front, involved forced marches into the Syrian desert, and was accompanied by massacres carried out or tolerated by officials and by the Special Organization (Teşkilât-ı Mahsusa). They read the abandoned-property laws as dispossession. Some telegrams cited as evidence of intent, such as those in the Naim–Andonian compilation, are disputed as to authenticity by Turkish historians.

Casualty figures

Figures are among the most contested elements. Armenian sources and many international scholars cite between roughly one and 1.5 million Armenian deaths. Turkish officials and historians cite much lower figures, often around 300,000 or fewer, and argue that wartime famine, disease, banditry and fighting killed very large numbers of Ottoman Muslims as well as Armenians. Ankara contends that high estimates grew through wartime propaganda while Muslim civilian losses in eastern Anatolia were ignored. No consensus figure exists, which is one reason why Türkiye argues for an open examination by historians rather than political resolutions.

Treaties after the war

The legal status of Anatolia and the Caucasus was settled by a sequence of treaties:

Turkish sources stress that Sèvres is a dead letter and that claims treating it as living law have no basis in international law. Armenia’s 1990 Declaration of Independence refers to international recognition of the 1915 Genocide, which Ankara has sometimes read as a latent territorial dimension; Armenian officials have said they seek normalization without preconditions. The unratified 2009 Zurich Protocols contained language recognizing the existing border under relevant treaties; Armenia annulled them in 2018.

The legal framework

The 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, adopted on 9 December 1948 and in force since 12 January 1951, defines genocide in Article II as specified acts ‘committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such’. Four points drive the legal debate:

1. Specific intent (dolus specialis). The International Court of Justice (ICJ), in Bosnia and Herzegovina v. Serbia and Montenegro (2007) and Croatia v. Serbia (2015), held that the intent to destroy a group must be established by convincing evidence, and that it must be the only reasonable inference from conduct.
2. A competent tribunal. Article VI refers to trial by a competent court of the state where the act occurred or by an international penal tribunal, and Article IX gives the ICJ jurisdiction over disputes between states. Türkiye argues that no such body has ruled that the Events of 1915 are genocide.
3. Non-retroactivity. The Convention contains no retroactivity clause. Ankara argues it cannot be applied to 1915. Others reply that the Convention declares existing law and that Raphael Lemkin, who coined the word genocide, referred to the Armenian case.
4. Scholarly and political recognition. The International Association of Genocide Scholars adopted a resolution in 1997 affirming the Armenian Genocide; the European Parliament (1987), France (2001), Germany’s Bundestag (2016) and the US Congress (2019) have adopted resolutions, and the US President used the term in a statement on 24 April 2021. A 2003 legal analysis by the International Center for Transitional Justice, prepared at the request of the Turkish Armenian Reconciliation Commission, concluded that the events included elements of the Convention’s definition while stating that the Convention could not be applied retroactively. Türkiye rejects the political resolutions as unilateral findings by bodies that are not courts.

In Perinçek v. Switzerland (Grand Chamber, 15 October 2015), the European Court of Human Rights held that the conviction of a Turkish politician for denying that the 1915 events were genocide violated freedom of expression under Article 10. The Court stated that it was not called upon to decide whether the events amount to genocide. Turkish sources cite the ruling in support of an open historical debate; Armenian sources and some scholars emphasize that the Court did not question the reality of the mass killings. Laws on denial differ by country, so the legal treatment of speech on this topic varies widely around the world.

ASALA and JCAG-ARA attacks

After 1973, when two Turkish consuls were shot in Santa Barbara, California, a wave of political violence targeted Turkish diplomats and their families. ASALA (Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia) and the Justice Commandos of the Armenian Genocide (JCAG, later Armenian Revolutionary Army, ARA) killed dozens of people between 1973 and 1984. Notable attacks include the 7 August 1982 attack at Ankara Esenboğa Airport and the 15 July 1983 bombing at Paris-Orly airport, which killed and injured travellers of several nationalities. Turkish government compilations state that 31 of the 32 JCAG-ARA attacks targeted Turkish representatives. Armenian institutions and mainstream diaspora organizations have generally condemned this violence. Ankara argues that its legacy still shapes how some diaspora circles frame the history.

The 2005 proposal and the 'Fair Memory' call

On 10 April 2005, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan wrote to Armenian President Robert Kocharyan proposing a joint commission of Turkish and Armenian historians and other international experts to study the events in the archives of Türkiye, Armenia and third countries. The Armenian response was that history should not be a precondition for establishing relations, and that the commission idea risked turning a recognized historical fact into a question. The 2009 Zurich Protocols did provide for a sub-commission on the historical dimension within an intergovernmental commission, but they were not ratified.

Türkiye describes its approach as Adil Hafıza (‘Fair Memory’): each society remembers its suffering, but historical judgments are made by historians with full archival access, not by parliaments. On 23 April 2014, then Prime Minister Erdoğan issued a message expressing condolences to the grandchildren of Armenians who lost their lives in the early 20th century, describing the pain as shared.

Key Players & Positions

• Republic of Armenia and Armenian institutions: Armenia’s government and the Armenian Apostolic Church call the events the Armenian Genocide (Armenians often use the term Medz Yeghern, ‘Great Calamity’, also used by Pope Francis in 2015 when he referred to the ‘first genocide of the twentieth century’ and by US presidents in earlier years). Yerevan commemorates 24 April and seeks international recognition. In recent years its leadership has stated that normalization with Türkiye can proceed in parallel and without preconditions.
• Armenian diaspora organizations: They lead recognition campaigns in parliaments and seek acknowledgement, restitution and commemoration. Positions on territorial or reparations demands differ by organization.
• States and parliaments that recognize: Including Russia (State Duma, 1995), France, Germany, Italy, Canada and the United States, among dozens of states. Their stated reasons combine historical judgment and commemorative purposes. The US executive branch has generally framed recognition as remembrance, not as a legal ruling on liability.
• Azerbaijan and some other states: Azerbaijan supports Türkiye’s position and, like Türkiye, frames the history through the wartime context of the Caucasus.
• Scholars: A large majority of genocide scholars accept the genocide characterization; a minority of historians, mostly in Türkiye and some elsewhere, argue that evidence of a central extermination plan is lacking and stress the wartime context, including the large Muslim civilian toll.
• Türkiye: Accepts that terrible suffering occurred, rejects the legal characterization and political resolutions, and calls for archival research by historians (see below).

Source Comparison

The table shows how typical international and Armenian sources and Turkish primary sources frame core questions. Both columns are summaries of stated positions, not editorial findings.

A useful reading method is to compare primary documents directly: the text of the 27 May 1915 law and implementing orders, the 24 May 1915 Allied declaration, the Convention text, the ICJ judgments and the Perinçek judgment. For the wider approach to evaluating claims about Türkiye, see Fact Check: Common Claims About Türkiye in International Media, Checked Against Primary Documents. Answers to common questions follow in the FAQ below.

Key Terms & Related Guides

• Events of 1915: Türkiye’s official term for the wartime relocation of Ottoman Armenians and the associated loss of life.
• Millet-i Sadıka: Ottoman designation for the Armenian community as the ‘loyal millet’.
• Hunchak / Dashnak: Armenian revolutionary parties founded in 1887 and 1890; the Dashnaksutyun remains an active political party today.
• Fedayi: Armed irregulars associated with Armenian revolutionary committees.
• Sevk ve İskân Kanunu: The Relocation and Resettlement Law of 27 May 1915.
• Dolus specialis: The specific intent to destroy a protected group, required under Article II of the Genocide Convention.
• ASALA / JCAG-ARA: Armenian militant organizations responsible for attacks on Turkish diplomats from 1973 to 1984.
• Fair Memory (Adil Hafıza): Türkiye’s proposal that historians, with access to all archives, assess the events.

Related guides: Türkiye–Armenia Normalization Since 2022; Fact Check: Common Claims About Türkiye in International Media; Editorial Principles; FAQ: Sources, Methodology and Perspective; About The Political Accord.

Perspective Note

Thepoliticalaccord presents global and regional affairs with a dedicated perspective from Türkiye. Sections marked 'Türkiye's Role' reflect official Turkish policy and legal doctrines as stated by Turkish primary sources. This article was prepared by the Thepoliticalaccord Editorial Team.

Cross-Publication Dossiers & Sister Desk Perspectives

For complementary primary-source analysis across our specialist editorial network, consult:

• Polity Review: The Events of 1915: Archives, International Law and the Call for Fair Memory — Events of 1915 Ottoman Armenians archives explained: wartime context, the 1915 law, genocide-law criteria, treaties, Armenian views and normalization talks.
• Borders & Blocs: The Events of 1915: Archives, Legal Framework and the Fair Memory Proposal — A dossier on the Events of 1915: Ottoman archives, the 1948 Genocide Convention, Kars and Lausanne treaties, ASALA, and Türkiye's Fair Memory proposal.
• Regional Balance: The Events of 1915: Historical, Archival and Legal Guide to Türkiye's Position — A sourced dossier on the Events of 1915: archives, the 1915 Relocation Law, treaties, genocide claims and Türkiye's position, with fact and thesis separated.