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Middle Eastern Studies

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Demographic engineering in the late Ottoman empire
and the Armenians
Online Publication Date: 01 May 2007
To cite this Article: Şeker, Nesim (2007) 'Demographic engineering in the late
Ottoman empire and the Armenians', Middle Eastern Studies, 43:3, 461 - 474
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Middle Eastern Studies,

Vol. 43, No. 3, 461 – 474, May 2007

Demographic Engineering in the Late

Ottoman Empire and the Armenians
NESIM ŞEKER

Demographic engineering is a novel concept employed to explain the forced

migrations and ethnic cleansing of recent decades in several regions of the world,
such as the Balkans, Caucasus and Africa. Nevertheless, it is not appropriate to
confine the use of the concept to a region and/or historical period since it defines
state intervention regarding population level, composition, distribution and increase/
decrease. In other words, any deliberate state programme or policy originating from
religious/ethnic discrimination or initiated for political, strategic or ideological
reasons which aim to increase the political and economic power of one ethnic group
over others by manipulating population through various methods can be defined as
demographic engineering.1
Within this framework, it should be pointed out that demographic engineering is
not a phenomenon peculiar to the decline of empires. It can be observed in various
ages in struggles for territory and for control of its resources. However, in earlier
ages, that is, before the rise of nation-states, attempts at demographic engineering
did not aim to provide homogeneity in a particular place. Resorting to engineering
methods such as manipulating population levels, forced migration, massacre and
ethnic cleansing with the purpose of providing ethnic and/or religious homogeneity
is discernible in relation to nationalism, particularly in its ethnic form. The spread of
ethnic nationalism by the end of the nineteenth century gave a new, and more
rigorous and merciless dimension to policy aiming to manipulate the demographic
characteristics of any given geographical entity, since ethno-demographic surgery
became the principal means of settling the majority of a certain group of population
in a given area or the elimination of ‘undesirables’ from the same area. For this
reason, it is possible to read the history of nationalism as the history of demographic
engineering. This is particularly true in the context of imperial decline and the
emergence of political entities which claim to be founded on national and/or ethnic
identity.2
The history of the Ottoman Empire fits well into this picture. A deliberate state
policy of manipulation of the demographic characteristics of particular regions can
frequently be observed in the Ottoman lands. From the sixteenth century until the
final years of the empire, this policy developed mainly in three phases. First, the early
forced migration and settlement policy of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries aimed
to take control of a region and a particular population through altering the
demographic structure. In order to secure their domination in recently conquered
territories, organize agricultural production and provide security and order, the
ISSN 0026-3206 Print/1743-7881 Online/07/030461-14 ª 2007 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/00263200701246157
Downloaded By: [University of Southern California] At: 16:59 17 August 2007

462 N. Şeker

Ottomans moved some populations from one area to another.3 The second phase
covers the second half of the nineteenth century and extended into 1913. During this
phase, the Ottoman territories became a shelter for thousands of Muslims forced to
migrate from the Balkans and Caucasia by the newly emerged nation-states and
Russia.4 In the resettlement of Muslim refugees, Ottoman statesmen considered
ethnic and religious characteristics and aimed to change the demographic
composition of certain regions in favour of the Muslims. Examples of such a policy
can clearly be seen during Abdülhamit II’s period (1876–1909).5 In the final phase,
during the First World War, there was an attempt at ethnic restructuring of the core
territory of the Ottoman state. During the war ideological transformation from a
relatively civic-minded to a selfish ethno-religious nationalism resulted in a state-led
demographic reconstruction in Anatolia. This article aims to analyze this last
intricate process through highlighting the case of the Armenians in the late Ottoman
Empire as they were subjected to a harsh policy of demographic engineering by the
Ottoman state and eventually removed from Anatolia, the core territory of today’s
Turkey.

Reporting on political conditions in the district, George Horton, the American

Consul-General in Smyrna, defines the situation as follows: ‘There are many who
believe that we are living on the crater of a volcano, and that, if race hatred is thus
systematically cultivated for some time to come, at last there will be some kind of an
eruption’.6 The situation was defined in this way not so much because of the increase
in tension among ethnic groups in the Ottoman Empire, but rather due to the recent
policy of the ruling party, the Committee of Union and Progress (hereafter CUP),
which, following the defeat and loss of territory in the Balkans, decided to follow a
strategy of aggressive Turkish nationalism targeting the non-Muslim population of
the Ottoman Empire.
The question why the CUP turned to a Turkish nationalist policy by the end of the
Balkan Wars has several answers. First, failure to prevent the disintegration and
territorial losses of the empire; second, inability to establish an Ottoman identity as a
means of keeping all the peoples of the empire together without distinction of race,
ethnicity or creed – the so-called Ottomanist doctrine; third, and connectedly, to
eliminate the disintegrative effects of nationalism; and, fourth, failure to end the
foreign intervention of the Great Powers, particularly on behalf of the Ottoman
non-Muslims, which had also occupied the agenda of the Ottoman reformers
throughout the nineteenth century,7 convinced the CUP leaders that the only way to
preserve the Ottoman state was to base it on an exclusively Turkish identity.
All these factors also explain to a great extent why this latecomer Turkish
nationalism essentially targeted non-Muslim ethnic groups with considerable
populations in Anatolia – the Greeks and the Armenians – on the eve of and
during the First World War. Both were perceived as a threat, as disloyal subjects
with the capacity to further break up the empire, as they were both resistant to an
Ottoman identity and insisted on their own nationalisms; they were also seen as
agents of imperialist penetration.
However, it is not correct to attribute this sudden shift of policy merely to the
actual circumstances surrounding the Ottoman state by the end of 1913 and to the
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Demographic Engineering in the Late Ottoman Empire 463

pragmatism of the Unionist leadership. The Greeks and the Armenians were actually
viewed with suspicion by early Turkists in Anatolia in the last decades of the
nineteenth century, coincidentally with the identification of Anatolia as a Turkish
homeland.8 The CUP, which was founded as the defender of the multi-national,
multi-ethnic and multi-religious structure of the empire, was, from the beginning,
under the control of non-Turkish Muslim intellectuals, one of whose primary
considerations was the unification of the Muslims against the threat coming from the
Armenians and the Balkan Christians in the empire. A group within the CUP even
considered itself as Turkish, emphasizing a single ‘dominant element [millet-i hâkime]
of the empire’. Their conviction was that the Turkish element was demographically
dominant in the empire; therefore the Turks should dominate and rule.9 The
composition of the CUP following the merger with the Ottoman Freedom Society
(Osmanlı Hürriyet Cemiyeti) in 1906 strengthened its Turkish base, since the
majority of the absorbed party was formed by Muslim Turkish officers who had been
active in the 1908 Revolution. Strengthening the state under Turkish nationalist
aspirations was one of the major goals of these officers.10
It is therefore not hard to understand why, even after the joyful response from all
parts of the empire to the reinstatement of the Constitution in July 1908, Unionist
policies, adopted immediately after the suppression of the 31 March counter-
revolutionary rebellion with the purpose of preserving the integrity of the state and
securing the unity of all elements in a centralized state, faced strong resistance even
from non-Turkish Muslim elements. Although the opposition of ethnic and religious
groups to the centralizing measures of the Unionists was due to fear of losing the
position and privileges inherited from the traditional system11 and a desire for the
maintenance of their own nationalist agendas, the claim that the CUP was in essence
a Turkish organization aiming at the Turkification of the non-Turkish population is
not unfounded.12 Ottomanism, official policy of the Ottoman state from the
beginning of the Tanzimat era in 1839, which promoted an inclusive Ottoman
citizenship to form a supra-nationality transcending ethnic and religious identities
through installing the principle of equality in the Ottoman legal system, interestingly
was argued by Ziya Gökalp, ideologue of the CUP and reputed for his pan-Turkist
ideas, to be used as a cloak for the Turkification of the Ottoman state.13 Although
the CUP maintained its adherence to an Ottoman unity in the aftermath of the
Revolution as a requirement for the integrity of the state, doubts about its viability
arose during the elections at the end of 1908. Disappointed by the behaviour of
ethnic groups during the election campaigns, Hüseyin Cahit (Yalçın), an ardent
Unionist journalist and later a member of the Central Committee, came to the
conclusion that the country was a fatherland only for the Turks. According to
Yalçın, only the Turks responded emotionally to the word vatan (fatherland). For a
Bulgarian, fatherland meant annexing Macedonia to Sofia; for a Greek, Istanbul _
together with some parts of Anatolia. Armenians were planning the partition of
Anatolia to make a homeland for themselves. Arabs and Albanians had vague
_
religious ties to Istanbul. How could they not turn to those who offered money and
provided them with the most benefit? In this case, the right to control the destiny of
the country and decide on its fundamentals should be in the hands of the Turks.14 As
a result, prior to the outbreak of the 31 March incident, Ottomanism was a lost cause
after the suppression of the rebellion it almost entirely lost its influence.15
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464 N. Şeker

From this brief narrative, it can be suggested that the CUP’s ideological turn to
Turkish nationalism was not a sudden occurrence following the end of the Balkan
wars. Rather, it followed an evolutionary line, the first stage of which is discernible in
centralizing measures taken after the counter-revolution; among these were the Law
of Associations enacted in August 1909 which forbade the establishment of political
clubs or associations having an ethnic or national resonance, and the imposition of
Ottoman Turkish as the compulsory language in educational institutions. In the
second stage, marked by resistance to such reforms and the Albanian rebellion
against them, the Unionist leadership became convinced that melting Ottoman
peoples in an Ottomanist pot would not be possible. The Albanian rebellion, which
illustrated to the Unionists that nationalism was not confined to non-Muslims,
marked a major step in their ideological transformation toward Turkish nationalism.
The final stage was reached by the end of the Balkan wars. It should, however, be
pointed out that the CUP did not abandon its formal adherence to the union of
peoples (ittihad-ı anasır) until 1916.16

The ideological transformation of the CUP resulted in the major drive toward the
policy of demographic reconstruction that began to be implemented in the full sense
early in 1914. The aim of this policy is clear: to increase and firmly establish political
and economic power of the Turkish ethnicity in territory within the jurisdiction of
the Ottoman state. This was to remove all internal and external setbacks originating
from the nationality question (anasır meselesi) of the nineteenth century, which
became a perpetual issue along with the Eastern Question, the diplomatic question
that emerged with the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire and signified the
competition among the Great Powers for control of the Ottoman territories.
Launching this policy in early 1914 and not before can be attributed to many factors,
but three of them were determinant. First, political power had been monopolized by
the CUP by mid-1913. Its firm control over the military and civil bureaucracy as well
as it being the only party with a widespread local organization gave a free hand to
the Unionists in decision-making and implementation. Secondly, as a result of the
Balkan wars the Eastern Question was removed from the Balkans and transferred to
Asia Minor. Although it was also transformed from a territorial to an economic and
commercial competition among the Great Powers, and although the further
disintegration of the Ottoman Empire was not in anyone’s interest and all were
united in favour of maintaining the integrity of the empire at that moment,17 that
was not the perception of the Unionists. The resurgence of the Armenian reform
question in diplomatic circles in 1913 and the agreement eventually concluded in
January 1914 made foreign intervention a reality; an intervention which would end
in the loss of the eastern provinces. Finally, the wave of immigration to Anatolia
from the Balkans and tragic stories of immigrants’ struggles for survival provided a
feeding ground for Turkish nationalism. In the words of a leading Ottoman
intellectual, Halide Edip (Adıvar),

the vast number of Balkan Turks, refugees who poured into Constantinople and
Anatolia with their lurid and sinister tales of martyrdom and suffering at the
hands of the Balkan Christians, the indifference and even the apparent joy of the
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Demographic Engineering in the Late Ottoman Empire 465

so-called civilized outside world at their sorry state, aroused a curious sympathy
for everything that was Turkish in those days.18

The problem of resettlement of the immigrants added to the growth of the Turkish
nationalist sentiment.
In these circumstances, the Unionist leadership radically departed from dealing
with the issues that emanated from nationality and decided to resolve them through
demographic engineering. As has been pointed out above, the aim was twofold: to
provide demographic superiority for Turkish ethnicity and to strengthen this
ethnicity economically. Demographic superiority was to be achieved through
deportation of the non-Muslim population and resettlement of Muslim refugees in
evacuated areas. However, ethnicity was the most important criterion in resettlement
as the Ministry of Interior repeatedly gave instructions for the dispersal of ‘unreliable’
elements such as the Arabs, the Albanians, the Bosnians and the Kurds (müteferrikan
iskân) during resettlement.19 In the resettlement of such ethnic groups the rule that
their population should not exceed 5–10 per cent of the Turkish population was to be
strictly observed. The economic nationalism of the CUP consisted of developing
Muslim/Turkish enterprises at the expense of the Greeks and the Armenians in
commerce and industry, and to form a Muslim/Turkish bourgeoisie which was to
form the basis of the state.20 As conceived by the leading Unionists, this was the
precondition for being ‘economically independent of internal and external rivals’.21
This policy was initially implemented against the Ottoman Greeks who were
mostly situated in the capital, the Aegean coast and Thrace prior to the outbreak of
the First World War. The boycott of Greek enterprises, aiming to disrupt the
economic power of the Greeks, was followed by the deportation of the Greek
population especially from the Aegean coast and Thrace, and the settlement of
Balkan refugees in their place. During this process, the Unionist government was not
directly involved, acting behind the scenes to prevent any possible foreign inter-
vention, but its local branches in Western Anatolia and the Special Organization
(Tes¸kilât-ı Mahsusa) organized the deportation with the intention of clearing the
Aegean region of Greeks in order to make space for the Muslim-Turkish refugees
coming from Serez, Kavala, Salonica and Kosovo.22 There was no official order for
the deportation; instead, repressive measures such as intimidation and sporadic
killings forced the population to leave.23 As a result of these measures, approxi-
mately 150,000 Greek residents had to migrate to Greece.
During the war against the Armenian population this policy was definitely harsher
and wider in scope. In fact, the resolution of the Armenian issue was what Horton
had predicted as the eruption of the volcano. An extensive literature dealing with
various aspects of the Armenian deportations and massacres of 1915 exists;
nevertheless, the debate on this issue has been limited to the labelling of the events,
i.e., ‘genocide’ or not.24 Rather than becoming involved in such restricted
debate, I will attempt to analyze the issue in the light of two contemporaneous
testimonies.

In the aftermath of the First World War, when the Armenian deportations and
massacres were part of a hot debate among the Ottoman public, it was usually
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466 N. Şeker

accepted that the Unionist policy toward the Armenian population was destructive,
although causation and justification for the measures through a defensive line of
policy, focusing on what happened and why, are generally overstated.25 An
illustrative example of this is found in the memoirs of Dr. Reşid, who was the
governor of Diyarbekir province during the events.26 He claims that, although
the government was perfectly aware of the Armenian activities and organizations
for the partition of the fatherland, as well as plans designed to exterminate
the Ottomans before and after the mobilization for war, it remained astonishingly
indifferent for seven or eight months before taking strong measures, i.e.,
deportation. Massacres of the Armenians occurred as a result of lack of means for
keeping order, transportation and supplies. Irregulars were used since the
government could not assign regular troops. Revenge attacks by tribes which were
accustomed to plunder and brigandage and by deserter soldiers on Armenian
convoys and villages regrettably could not be prevented. As a result, massacres
ensued. However, deportation was unavoidable since the intentions of the
Armenians with regard to Ottoman lands and the Ottoman nation were clear. Not
taking these measures would have been suicide for the nation and government.
Regarding the abandoned Armenian property, Dr. Reşit states that immediately
after the evacuation, refugees were resettled into Armenian homes while military
needs were supplied with some of their movables and most of the rest were sold at
auction.
Besides this line of argument justifying the deportations and massacres, an
account by Celal Bey, governor of Aleppo in the same period of time provides
another part of the picture.27 Celal states that initially he was not of the opinion
that deportation orders were for the annihilation of the Armenians, rather he
regarded them as a temporary precaution entailing their evacuation from the war
zone. Since he did not carry out the deportation of the Armenians in Antakya, he
was removed from his office and posted to Konya, where he witnessed the
miserable conditions of thousands of deported Armenians, from Konya, Izmit, _
Eskişehir and Karahisar, waiting at the station to be sent to their destination,
Deyr-i Zor. He was under pressure from both official and unofficial authorities to
hasten the deportation process. Since he viewed the deportation as detrimental to
_
the country, he told the authorities in Konya and Istanbul that he would not
participate. Later, a deputy of Konya conveyed the verbal message from a
member of the Central Committee of the CUP that this decision had been taken by
the Central Committee after long discussion, that it was not possible to change it
and since the deportation of the Armenians was a necessity for the national ideal,
he should change his mind; otherwise he would be discharged from office,
which soon happened. Asking why the government deported the Armenians to the
deserts of Zor which was lacking water, food, and materials for construction, Celal
Bey states that unfortunately it is not possible to deny the question or to find
excuses for it. The intention was annihilation and [they were] annihilated
(Maateessüf meseleyi inkâr ve te’vile mecal yok. Maksat imha idi ve imha edildi).
It is also impossible to hide the fact that this decision was taken by some
influential members of the Central Committee of the CUP and was implemented
by the government, which itself was formed by the members of the Central
Committee.
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Demographic Engineering in the Late Ottoman Empire 467

Many accounts could be added to these. These were chosen since their authors
were ‘insiders’ representing the perpetrator side and officials dependent on the
central government during the deportations and massacres. Secondly, these officials
took the opposite stance toward deportation. Thirdly, both give important clues to
the implementation and aim of the deportation law. Even from this brief overview of
these accounts, it is possible to draw the following conclusions with regard to the
conduct of affairs by the government:

. The central government and those who were of the opinion that the deportation
of the Armenians was absolutely necessary acted out of fear of national
extinction. Deportation was a part of the national ideal.
. All Armenians were suspect. The anger of the government was directed not only
at the Armenian activists and collaborators but at the whole population.
. The government decided on the deportation of Armenians without taking any
measures for their sustenance or safety. Although there is no mention of an
official order for the destruction of the Armenians, their survival was hardly
possible because no measures were taken to provide natural means of livelihood,
such as food, health protection, transportation and settlements.
. The evacuation of the Armenians, from the government’s point of view, was
necessary not only for strategic reasons but also for ‘practical ones’; that is, for
the resettlement of Muslim refugees who were existing in miserable conditions
and to supply the Ottoman army.

What about the massacres carried out through the Special Organization, irregulars
and some Kurds? It is possible to attribute the drives to three factors, one structural,
one historical and one contextual. The first is the state tradition of repressing any
unrest by the reestablishment of order by force. It is possible to trace this tradition to
the early centuries of the Ottoman Empire, when nationalism did not exist even in
the vocabulary. As Davison aptly states,

the use of force was of course not confined to the repression of nationalist
movements, but extended to the repression of rebellion that occurred because
of the ambitions of a local strongman, because of local grievances against
provincial administrators, because of tribal discontent, or for whatever reason.28

Particularly in the second half of the nineteenth century, however, unrest usually
took a nationalist character, especially in the Balkans. The central government took
up arms against rebels and used irregulars together with regular troops to suppress
rebellions, as was the case in the Bulgarian uprising in 1876 and the Armenian
uprisings in 1894–96. Uprisings were usually local in character, and coercive
measures were applied for the restoration of order. However, the case in 1915 was
different. At this time, the intention was not to restore order but to create a new
order. This order was to be founded by a civil–military elite with a social Darwinist
outlook drawn from militaristic and nationalist German doctrines29 and experienced
in competing ethnic nationalisms in Macedonia and accompanying foreign inter-
vention, in the Albanian rebellions, in the revolts in Yemen, in the war against Italy
in Tripoli and, finally, in the Balkan wars. All these experiences proved to this elite
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468 N. Şeker

that the state was in a struggle for survival and taught them to adopt ‘a culture and
politics of violence’ as instruments for achieving their goals.30
The second factor is the existence of an ethnic group, namely the Kurds, that
could be mobilized against the Armenians in eastern Anatolia, where the massacres
were most intensive. Kurdish–Armenian relations were increasingly strained in the
last decades of the nineteenth century. Relations between Kurds and Armenians had
deteriorated due to excesses against prosperous Armenians by some Kurdish
notables, Russian–British rivalry in the region, the activities of the Armenian
revolutionary organizations, Abdülhamit II’s policy of using some Kurdish tribes as
a base of support and as military power against the Armenian nationalists, and their
involvement in the Armenian massacres of 1894–96. Coming to 1914, the most
persistent problem between these two peoples was the so-called agrarian issue, which
was actually the essential source of conflict. Allowed by the central government to
seize and pillage Armenian lands and property following the 1894–96 persecutions,
Kurdish notables and landlords who had formed the Hamidiye regiments resisted
any attempt at restitution of usurped lands by the governments after 1908.31 It is not
too surprising, then, to see that most of the Kurds involved in the Armenian
massacres were those who had been recruited into these regiments, which were
initially dissolved after 1908 and soon revived as militias, and fought in the Balkan
wars and on the eastern front during the First World War. It is important to
determine the reasons that led a sizeable part of the Kurdish population to
participate in the Armenian massacres. Although the issue needs more research and
analysis, particularly regarding Kurdish–Armenian relations after 1908 within the
framework of socio-economic and cultural differences, central governments’
alliances in the region and Russian intrigues especially after 1913, it is no
exaggeration to say that while Armenian deportation and massacres resolved the
so-called Armenian Question for the central government, it did the same with the
agrarian question in favour of the usurpers.
Finally, the contextual factor should be pointed out, signified by the anger of the
Unionists toward the Armenians at a time when the Ottoman army was heavily
defeated in Sarıkamıs¸ under the command of Enver Pasha and the Allied navies
seriously threatened the capital through the military offensive in the Dardanelles.
The Unionists laid the blame for the defeat in the east to the Armenian collaboration
with Russia and, consequently, they perceived all Armenians, of all ages, as
collaborators and intriguers for the Armenian national cause. At this point it is
important to note Enver’s warnings to the Armenian Patriarch, which read:

And yet one of the first acts of the Minister of War, Enver Pasha, after the
outbreak of hostilities between Turkey and Russia was to solemny [sic] warn the
Armenian Patriarch that any attempt at insurrection or any act of aggression
against the Musulmans on the part of this Community would expose it to the
most terrible consequences. He explained to him clearly that, busy at it was
defending the country against three powerful enemies, the Government, which
no doubt would proceed most rigorously on its own account but making a
distinction in the measure of the possible between the guilty and innocent,
would be unable to protect it against the just but blind vengeance of the
Musulman crowd four and one half times as numerous as the Armenians. He
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Demographic Engineering in the Late Ottoman Empire 469

pointed out then even if he, Minister of War, had disposable troops to sent [sic]
to the spot, the absence of means of communication would prevent him from
intervening in time and that, under such conditions, all provocation would be
not only a crime but an act of folly.
The President of Chamber, Halil Bey, addressed the same warning, in the
same impressive language, to the Armenian deputies.32

The Armenian deportations and massacres were the peak of the demographic
engineering policy in the Ottoman Empire. The execution of such a policy would not
have resulted in an, at least religiously, homogenous Anatolia had not a strong
Turkish nationalist movement emerged with the aim of preserving the territorial and
demographic status quo in the post-war context. By the end of the First World War,
the territory of the Ottoman state had been de facto delineated into Anatolia and the
demographic composition of this territory had been radically changed by the
Unionists’ wartime policy. However, there was the possibility of remapping Anatolia
along ethnic lines, as favoured by the Allied Powers’ peace-making scheme. Also, the
facts that repatriation of the Armenian and Greek refugees, which was seen as
indispensable for the establishment of an Armenian state stretching from the six
vilayets to Cilicia and the annexation of western Anatolia to Greece, and
consequently, the restoration of their abandoned property were alarming a parti-
cular group of military and political elite comprising of ex-Unionists, commanders
and officials, both in the capital and the provinces.
The Turkish nationalist movement was born amidst this alarming situation. Its
nucleus, Defence of Rights societies, which were Unionist initiatives, soon appeared
in regions particularly under Armenian and Greek threat. When the cession of
territory became a reality rather than a possibility through the Greek occupation of
_
Izmir in May 1919, it gained momentum, mobilizing the population explicitly against
Armenian and Greek political aims within the framework of Islamic solidarity,
which proved to be the most effective instrument, together with stressing the
Armenian threat in the eastern provinces to draw support from numerous Kurdish
notables and tribal leaders. Thus the purpose of this movement was from the
beginning to quash Armenian and Greek claims over Anatolia and to use all means
to this end. It was within this context that the repatriation of surviving Armenians
and the restoration of their property, being among the priorities of the Ottoman
governments, under Allied pressure, was to be put into effect.
However, the repatriation of the Armenians faced strong resistance, especially in
the provinces. It is obvious that the preservation of seized, pillaged or nationalized
abandoned property was an important motive for the opposition of the Muslim
population to repatriation. But more than these people, the resistance was led by
local officials who had a Unionist background and had played a greater or lesser role
in the Armenian deportations and massacres and were still occupying positions of
influence. Obstruction to the repatriation of the Armenians by such officials was
frequently recorded. Reporting on the condition of deported Armenians in Asia
Minor, the American Consul General in Salonica wrote:

Encouraged by the [Moudros] Armistice, and the declaration of the Ottoman

Government that the deported are now free to return to their homes, many of
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470 N. Şeker

these [Armenian] people . . . are now setting out to return to their old homes.
They are to be found all along the roads, in general without money, food,
shelter, or clothing; and are therefore easy victims to death and disease. Their
condition is made still worse by the fact that although the Central Government
has apparently changed its attitude toward them, nevertheless the attitude of
local officials with whom they come in vital daily contact, has not changed . . .
Those of the deported who reach their homes at last, are finding them either
in ruins as a result of general plunder, or else they are occupied by Moslem
refugees from European Turkey, the Caucasus, or elsewhere. The latter refuse to
give up the homes they occupy, and the Moslem officials naturally support the
Moslem occupants rather than the Armenian new-comers, who were the former
owners. Thus the Armenians find themselves on the streets of their own villages,
surrounded by hostile people and officials, and without means of work or
support.33

A similar report was transmitted by the American Consul in Trabzon, who stated that
‘the Turkish authorities are placing all possible obstacles in the path of Allied control
officers to prevent the repatriation of Armenians and the restitution of their
_
property’.34 Complaints by Armenians who returned to Geyve, a district in Izmit, and
demanded the restitution of their homes only to encounter reluctance and actual
mistreatment from the district governor was conveyed to the Ottoman government to
little avail.35 At that time the Ottoman government was inclined to ascribe the
hindrances to repatriation to the difficulties of transportation, food supplies and
insufficient dwellings.36 Nevertheless, the political aspect of the repatriation was not
disregarded. The Ottoman government did not allow the repatriation of the
Armenians to eastern Anatolia since the region was sparsely populated due to the
evacuation of Muslims following the Russian invasion. If Armenians were resettled
there, it was highly possible that Muslims would form as the minority in case of a
plebiscite.37 As a result, Armenians could effectively be repatriated only to
Cilicia where approximately 120,000 Armenians were resettled under British
and French occupation.38 In the east, the British occupation of Kars and the transfer
of its administration to the Armenians early in 1919 allowed limited repatriation.
The repatriation of the Armenians, therefore, was contingent on the occupation
by Allied Powers which the Turkish nationalists, who had become more unified
and organized by the autumn of 1919, viewed as an attempt to cede the occupied
territory to a would-be Armenian state. Planning a mode of action in Cilicia, the
nationalists portrayed the situation such that, as a result of the withdrawal of
Ottoman forces from the region, the Armenians began to establish themselves under
British and French protection, with the result that an immediate and concentrated
Armenian threat emerged in Cilicia. This threat was aggravated by the employment
of Armenian divisions in foreign uniforms which, through psychological and
material measures, forced the Muslims to emigrate, to be replaced with Armenians
from various parts of the Ottoman Empire. As precautions, the nationalist
leadership prohibited the emigration of Muslims, and the selling of immovable
property to foreigners and Christians, and ordered the implementation of a strict
boycott against non-Muslims and the formation of nationalist organizations in the
region.39
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Demographic Engineering in the Late Ottoman Empire 471

Viewing the Armenians as a graver danger than the officially occupying power, the
Turkish nationalists began to extend their organization widely through civil and
military staff, local notables, and tribal chieftains, and to form bands in Cilicia.
Exploiting the French enrolment of Armenian volunteers in the occupation forces,
they targeted the Armenians in order to force the French to withdraw. As a matter of
fact, France, as soon as it took over control of the region from the British, displayed
its willingness to reach an agreement with the Turkish nationalists. In January 1920,
nationalist attacks began in Maraş, a district in Cilicia with one of the highest
percentages of Armenian population in late 1919. Besieging the city for about three
weeks, nationalist mobilization resulted in the devastation of the district and the
killing of thousands of Armenians.40 Similar action was followed in Urfa, Haçin and
Ayintab. When it became obvious as early as June 1920 that France was endea-
vouring to reach an agreement with the nationalists, which eventually resulted in a
complete withdrawal, there remained no option for the Armenians but to migrate,
despite assurances for their safety from both the nationalist government and
France. In consequence, over 50,000 Armenians departed from Cilicia prior to and
immediately after the conclusion of the Franco-Turkish Accord.41
Thus, destruction of the material foundation of a perceived threat toward the
territorial integrity of what remained of the Ottoman Empire was a legitimate reason
for action from the Turkish nationalists’ point of view. Although their motives and
goals demonstrated some fundamental differences from those of the Unionists in a
radically changed context, they resorted to the same means in dealing with both the
Armenians and the Greeks during their struggle. In fact, like the Unionists, they
viewed the non-Muslims as a threat.42

The removal of almost the entire Armenian population from Anatolia during the
First World War and its aftermath signified the radical shift in the management of
ethnic conflict from an imperial tradition to one peculiar to nation-state formation,
in which nation was defined in ethnic and religious terms. Although resorting to
repressive measures to terminate a conflict is common to both, the nation-state is by
definition exclusionary and therefore, in addition to suppressing the element of
instability, it may opt to eliminate it since it is no longer only a source of instability
but also represents the ‘other’ and a rival of the ‘imagined nation’. In the recon-
structed ethnic and religious nationalism of the Unionists and later the Turkish
nationalists, the Armenians were obviously cast out of the Ottoman com-
munity, particularly after the entry of the Ottoman state into the First World
War. Whether well-founded or not, they were perceived by the policy makers as a
menace to the security of the state. Legitimized by security concerns, the
implementation of the Armenian deportation, however, demonstrates that the
government’s aim was not confined to security. Changing the demographic
composition of Anatolia and providing that no potentially ‘dangerous’ element
would densely inhabit any given region in order to create the desired social fabric
were the principal goals.
Elimination of ‘undesirables’, central to the making of the Turkish nation-state in
1923, was the most noticeable characteristic of the final transformation of the
Ottoman Empire. Construing this transformation as the eventual consequence of
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472 N. Şeker

competing nationalisms among ethnic groups on overlapping territory seems

insufficient. Rather, it was the product of the redefinition of the ethno-religious
constituencies of the nation, as Turks and Muslims, by the civil and military elite
representing the central state having a capability to mobilize various means for the
ethnic restructuring of Anatolia. Actually, such means of demographic reconstruc-
tion as deportation and resettlement could widely and effectively be carried out only
by an organized power, that is, the state. It is noticeable that the ethnic restructuring
of Anatolia was fulfilled by two successive cadres of officials and officers, who were
capable of using governmental means to this end. Triggered in a wartime situation by
the Unionists, the process was completed by the Turkish nationalists, whose success
was largely predetermined by the ground that the Unionist policy had prepared.

Notes
1. For motives of deliberate demographic alterations and tools employed in the process see M.Z.
Bookman, The Demographic Struggle for Power: The Political Economy of Demographic Engineering in
the Modern World (London: Frank Cass, 1997) and M. Weiner and M.S. Teitelbaum, Political
Demography, Demographic Engineering (New York: Berghahn Books, 2001).
2. For the relationship between dissolution of empires, forced migration and ethnic cleansing see R.
Brubaker, ‘Aftermaths of Empire and the Unmixing of Peoples’, in K. Barkey and M. von Hagen
(eds.), After Empire: Multiethnic Societies and Nation-Building (Boulder, CO and Oxford: Westview
Press, 1997), pp.155–80.
_ Tekeli, ‘‘Osmanlı Imparatorlu
3. I. _ gu’ndan Günümüze Nüfusun Zorunlu Yer Degiştirmesi ve Iskan _
Sorunu’, Toplum ve Bilim, Vol.50 (Summer 1990), pp.50–4.
4. K.H. Karpat, Ottoman Population: Demographic and Social Characteristics (Wisconsin: The
University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), pp.60–77 and A.C. Eren, Türkiye’de Göç ve Göçmen Meseleleri:
Tanzimat Devri, Ilk _
_ Kurulan Göçmen Komisyonu, Çıkarılan Tüzükler (Istanbul: Nurgök Matbaası,
1966).
_
5. N. Ipek, Rumeli’den Anadolu’ya Türk Göçleri (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, 1994), pp.155–9
and A. Sofuoglu, ‘Osmanlı Devletinde Ortaya Çıkan Göç Problemleri ve Türk Göçlerinin Bir Safhası:
1903–1904 (Rumı̂ 1319) Yılında Meydana Gelen Göçler’, Türk Kültürü, Vol.XXXIII, No.383 (March
1995), pp.177–8.
6. From George Horton to the Secretary of State, 21 Feb. 1914, United States-National Archives,
Record Group 59, 867.00/606.
7. R. Davison, ‘Nationalism as an Ottoman Problem and the Ottoman Response’, in W.W. Haddad and
W. Ochenswald (eds.), Nationalism in a Non-National State: The Dissolution of the Ottoman Empire
(Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 1977), pp.25–56.
8. D. Kushner, The Rise of Turkish Nationalism 1876–1908 (London: Frank Cass, 1977), pp.51–4.
9. Ş. Hanioglu, The Young Turks in Opposition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp.169–70.
10. E.J. Zürcher, Unionist Factor: The Role of the Committee of Union and Progress in the Turkish National
Movement, 1905–1926 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1984), pp.22–3.
11. For a convincing argument see A. Kansu, The Revolution of 1908 in Turkey (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1997),
pp.157–92.
12. K.H. Karpat, ‘The Memoirs of N. Batzaria. The Young Turks and Nationalism’, International Journal
_
of Middle East Studies, Vol.6 (1975), pp.276–99; S. Akşin, Jön Türkler ve Ittihat _
ve Terakki (Istanbul:
Remzi Kitabevi, 1987), pp.103–4.
13. U. Heyd, Foundations of Turkish Nationalism: The Life and Teachings of Ziya Gökalp (London:
Luzac & Company Ltd and the Harvill Press, 1950), p.73.
_
14. H.C. Yalçın, Siyasal Anılar (Istanbul: _ Bankası Kültür Yayınları, 2000), p.73.
Türkiye Iş
15. Z. Gökalp, Principles of Turkism, trans. R. Devereux (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1968), p.8.
_
16. T.Z. Tunaya, Türkiye’de Siyasal Partiler, Vol.III (Istanbul: _
Iletişim Yayınları, 2000), p.295.
17. N.D. Harris, ‘The Effect of the Balkan Wars on European Alliances and the Future of the Ottoman
Empire’, Proceedings of the American Political Science Association, Vol.10, Tenth Annual Meeting
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Demographic Engineering in the Late Ottoman Empire 473

(1913), p.111; R.H. Davison, ‘The Armenian Crisis, 1912–1914’, The American Historical Review,
Vol.53, No.3 (April 1948), pp.481–505.
18. H. Edib, Turkey Faces West (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1930), p.115.
19. _
F. Dündar, Ittihat _
ve Terakki’nin Müslümanları Iskân _
Politikası (1913–1918) (Istanbul: _
Iletişim
Yayınları, 2001).
20. Ziya Gökalp’s words criticizing Ottomanism demonstrate well the recently developed nationalist
economic outlook. He claims that it was the Turks who had suffered most from Ottomanism since the
Christians and Jews had occupied economic key positions in commerce, industry and the crafts while
Muslims who were the ruling millet in the Ottoman Empire remained as peasants, government officials
and soldiers. As a result, ‘while the poor Turks inherited from the Ottoman Empire nothing but a
broken sword and an old-fashioned plough, there arose among the non-Muslim communities, which
had no part in the Government, a wealthy bourgeoisie with European education. The Muslims
produced no such class possessing the qualifications required of rulers, notably education, initiative
and organizing abilities’. Heyd, Foundations of Turkish Nationalism, pp.73–4.
21. N. Berkes, The Development of Secularism in Turkey (Montreal: McGill University Press, 1964), p.335.
22. _
N. Taçalan, Ege’de Kurtulus¸ Savas¸ı Bas¸larken (Istanbul: Aksoy Yayıncılık, 1998), p.44.
23. R.P. Adalian, ‘Comparative Policy and Differential Practice in the Treatment of Minorities in
Wartime: The United States Archival Evidence on the Armenians and Greeks in the Ottoman
Empire’, Journal of Genocide Research, Vol.3, No.1 (2001), pp.31–48.
24. Given the politicization of this issue, consider recent parliamentary decisions in several countries, it
might be useful to remember an article published 30 years ago giving the essence of controversy as
emanating from the approach of both the Turkish and Armenian historians. It is no exaggeration to
point out that the claims presented in the article are still valid. G. Dyer, ‘Turkish ‘‘Falsifiers’’ and
Armenian ‘‘Deceivers’’: Historiography and the Armenian Massacres’, Middle Eastern Studies, Vol.12
(Jan. 1976), pp.99–110.
25. F.M. Göçek, ‘Reconstructing the Turkish Historiography on the Armenian Massacres and Deaths of
1915’, in R.G. Hovannisian (ed.), Looking Backward, Moving Forward (New Brunswick and London:
Transaction Publishers, 2003), p.211.
26. A Circassian by origin, Dr. Reşit is one of the founders of the Ottoman Union Society (Ittihad-i _
Osmani Cemiyeti), the nucleus of the CUP that had appeared in 1889. When most of the leading
members of the CUP were exiled by Abdülhamit II in1895, he was enrolled in the Fourth Army which
was situated in the eastern provinces where the Armenian events took place. In 1897, he was exiled to
Tripoli where he stayed until the 1908 Revolution. When the Great War broke out, he was appointed
governor of the Diyarbekir province. He implemented the deportation law of 1915 in the region and he
was arrested due to his responsibility for the Armenian massacres at the end of the war. Before being
court-martialled, he escaped from prison and committed suicide on 6 Feb. 1919. Part of his memoirs
relating to the Armenian deportation and massacres were serialized between 10 Feb. and 14 March
1919 in a daily newspaper named Memleket. Its transcription was published as Sürgünden Intihara _
Dr. Res¸it Bey’in Hatıraları [From Exile to Suicide: Dr. Reşit Bey’s Memoirs], ed. Ahmet
_
Mehmetefendioglu (Izmir: Tükelmat A.Ş., 1992), pp.19–43.
27. His accounts appeared in a daily under the title, ‘Ermeni Vakayi ve Esbab ve Tesirleri I-III’ [Armenian
Events and Their Causes and Effects], Vakit, 10, 12 and 13 Dec. 1918.
28. Davison, ‘Nationalism as an Ottoman Problem’, p.45.
29. H. Nezir, ‘Aspects of the Social and Political Thought of the Ottoman Military, 1908–1914’ (Ph.D.
thesis, University of Manchester, 2001).
30. G.W. Gawrych, ‘The Culture and Politics of Violence in Turkish Society, 1903–14’, Middle Eastern
Studies, Vol.22, No.3 (July 1986), pp.307–30.
31. F. Ahmad, ‘Unionist Relations with the Greek, Armenian and Jewish Communities of the Ottoman
Empire, 1908–1914’, in B. Braude and B. Lewis (eds.), Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire
(London: Holmes & Meier Publishers, 1982), pp.420, 423.
32. The National Congress of Turkey, The Turco-Armenian Question: The Turkish Point of View
(Constantinople: Société Anonyme de Papeterie et d’Imprimerie, 1919), pp.79–80. Cf. ‘And as they
could not reach the guilty ones, they punished all those that were left, irrespective of age or sex; and as
Enver put it, they had no time to discriminate and settle this matter, while war was pending, in a
‘‘platonic’’ way, but had to resort to drastic measures, no matter who might be hurt thereby. Enver has
told me repeatedly that he warned the Armenian Patriarch that if the Armenians made any attack on
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474 N. Şeker

the Turks or rendered any assistance to the Russians while this war was pending, he will be compelled
to use extreme measures against them.’ From Morgenthau to Lansing, 18 Nov. 1915, United States-
National Archives, Record Group 59, 867.00/798 1/2.
33. From George Horton to the Secretary of State, 16 Dec. 1918, United States-National Archives,
Record Group 59, 867.4016/398.
34. From G. Bie Ravndal to the Secretary of State, 12 Aug. 1919, United States-National Archives,
Record Group 59, 867.00/923.
35. Sabah [Morning], 21 Nov. 1918.
36. Statement of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, 21 Dec. 1918, Meclis-i Mebusan Zabıt Ceridesi [Minutes
of the Ottoman Assembly].
37. _
S. Akşin, Istanbul _
Hükümetleri ve Millıˆ Mücadele, Vol.I (Istanbul: Cem Yayınevi, 1992), p.32.
38. From J.B. Jackson to Secretary of State, 31 May 1919, United States-National Archives, Record
Group 59, 867.00/897. Also É. Brémond, La Cilicie en 1919–1920 (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1921),
pp.11–12.
39. General Staff Archive, Ankara, 27 Nov. 1919, 270/196.
40. From Bristol to Secretary of State, 14 Feb. 1920, United States-National Archives, Record Group 59,
867.00/1112 and 23 March 1920, 867.00/1179. Also S.E. Kerr, The Lions of Marash (Albany, NY:
State University of New York Press, 1973).
41. C. Price, ‘Present Turkish Rule in Cilicia’, Current History, Vol.16 (May 1922), pp.216–20.
42. In the light of these facts, the insistence of the Turkish delegation during the Lausanne Peace
negotiations for a compulsory and undefined exchange of populations with Greece, and its refusal to
accept the repatriation of the Armenian refugees, become comprehensible. B.N. Şimşir, Lozan
Telgrafları [Lausanne Telegrams], Vol.II (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, 1992), p.581.