The Ottoman Archives and the Events of 1915: What the Records Establish and What They Cannot

Why It Matters

The Ottoman archives establish how the wartime state organised, justified and administered the 1915 relocation of Ottoman Armenians. On their own they do not settle the legal question of whether the Events of 1915 amount to 'genocide' as defined in 1948. That question depends on proof of specific intent (dolus specialis) and, under the Convention's own structure, on a competent tribunal, and no such tribunal has ruled on 1915.

This guide separates three layers that are often blurred: what the documents say, how casualty figures were built, and what international law requires. It presents Armenian and international scholarly positions in their own terms and sets out Türkiye's position separately, with attribution.

Background

An empire at war and an Eastern Front

The Ottoman Empire entered the First World War in late 1914. Its Eastern Front faced the Russian Empire across Anatolia and the Caucasus. The Sarıkamış campaign of December 1914 to January 1915 ended in heavy Ottoman losses, mostly from cold and disease. In the spring of 1915 the Ottoman Third Army and the eastern provinces were under acute strain, with Russian forces advancing and supply lines stretching across mountainous terrain.

This context matters to both sides of the debate. Turkish sources treat it as the setting for a security measure. Armenian and many international historians treat it as the setting in which a wartime government had the means, and in their view the intent, to remove a population.

The revolutionary committees

Turkish official historiography, and a large body of Ottoman and Russian-era documentation, trace the political radicalisation of part of the Armenian movement to the period after the 1877–1878 Russo-Turkish War and the 1878 Congress of Berlin. Two revolutionary organisations emerged:

• Hunchak (Social Democrat Hunchakian Party), founded in 1887.
• Dashnaktsutyun (Armenian Revolutionary Federation), founded in Tbilisi in 1890.

Turkish sources point to a sequence of armed actions attributed to the committees: the 1890 Kumkapı demonstration in Istanbul, the 1893 unrest in Merzifon, Yozgat and Kayseri, the 1894 Sasun rebellion and the 1896 raid on the Ottoman Bank in Istanbul. They also cite armed fedayi bands led by figures such as Antranik and Dro, and Armenian volunteer units that fought alongside Russian forces in 1914–1915.

Armenian and many Western scholars place the same period in a different frame. They emphasise the Hamidian massacres of 1894–1896, the failure of promised provincial reforms and the fact that the committees represented a minority of a largely loyal community. Both frames agree that armed committees existed. They disagree on how representative they were and on whether their actions justified the measures taken against the wider civilian population.

The 1915 law and the sequence of orders

The core legal text is the Relocation and Resettlement Law (Sevk ve İskân Kanunu, formally a temporary law on measures to be taken against those who oppose the government in wartime). It was adopted on 27 May 1915 and published in the official gazette Takvim-i Vekayi on 1 June 1915. It authorised the army and military commanders to relocate populations in or near war zones where they were judged to be engaged in espionage, treason, armed resistance or obstruction of military operations. Supplementary instructions followed, including regulations on the property of those relocated.

Two events frame the timeline around it:

• Van, April 1915. Armed confrontation in and around Van, where Armenian forces took control of the city as Russian troops approached. Turkish sources describe it as a rebellion behind the front. Armenian sources describe it as a defensive stand.
• 24 April 1915. Arrests of Armenian community figures in Istanbul. Turkish sources describe them as arrests of committee members. Armenian communities mark the date as the start of the genocide.

Aftermath: tribunals, treaties and politics

In 1919–1920 Ottoman courts-martial tried members of the wartime leadership. Armenian and many international historians treat these proceedings as important evidence. Turkish historiography notes that they took place under Allied occupation and political pressure. Britain interned about 140 Ottoman officials on Malta and, after searching for evidence, released them in 1921 without a trial.

The unratified Treaty of Sèvres (1920) never entered into force. Türkiye's borders and the status of minorities rest on the Treaties of Alexandropol (1920), Moscow (1921) and Kars (1921) and on the Treaty of Lausanne (24 July 1923). The treaty record guide sets these texts out as primary documents.

What the Archives Contain and Who Can Read Them

Ottoman collections

The principal Ottoman holdings are in the Presidential State Archives (Devlet Arşivleri) in Istanbul, historically known as the Prime Ministry Ottoman Archive (BOA). Series most relevant to 1915 include:

• ciphered telegrams of the Interior Ministry and its settlement and migrant directorates;
• minutes and decisions of the Council of Ministers;
• Foreign Ministry and War Ministry correspondence;
• the Takvim-i Vekayi gazette, which carries the 1915 law and later regulations;
• records of abandoned-property commissions.

Military records are held by the Turkish General Staff's military history archive (ATASE). Türkiye states that its archives are open to researchers of all nationalities. Some critics, including several historians working on the period, argue that access to certain military and security series has been uneven and that some documents may have been lost or dispersed. Turkish officials reject any suggestion that records were deliberately purged.

Armenian and third-country collections

The record is not only Ottoman. Türkiye's 2005 proposal rests on the premise that all collections should be read together:

• Armenian repositories: the National Archives of Armenia, the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem, the Mekhitarist libraries, the Boghos Nubar Library in Paris and the archives of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation in the United States.
• German and Austro-Hungarian diplomatic archives: reports from the consuls and ambassadors of the Ottoman Empire's wartime allies.
• British, French, Russian and United States archives: including the American diplomatic correspondence of Ambassador Henry Morgenthau and consuls in Anatolia, and the 1916 British Blue Book compiled by James Bryce and Arnold Toynbee.

A frequent point of friction is that Turkish scholars and officials cite the memoir of Hovhannes Katchaznouni, the first Prime Minister of the Republic of Armenia, whose 1923 address to the Dashnak party congress acknowledged the party's role in preparing for armed conflict. Armenian scholars question how it is read and argue it does not address the question of civilian relocation. Equally, Turkish historians contest the authenticity of some documents cited by Armenian authors, notably the telegrams published by Aram Andonian in 1920. Studies by Şinasi Orel and Süreyya Yuca argued that they were forged, while other scholars defend their reliability. Neither dispute can be resolved by assertion; both require paleographic, archival and provenance work.

What the documents can and cannot show

Documents can show orders, routes, numbers of convoys, instructions on food and protection, property decrees and prosecutions. They are weaker on intent, because wartime governments rarely write down what they do not wish to be read, and because ciphered and oral instructions are hard to reconstruct. This is why the two camps read the same series differently. The Turkish side cites telegrams ordering protection of convoys and provision of supplies as evidence of a security measure. Armenian and many Western scholars cite the same corpus alongside testimony, German and American reports and the fate of the convoys as evidence of intent to destroy.

The Enver–Talat Correspondence as Türkiye Cites It

Türkiye points to the exchange between Minister of War Enver Pasha and Minister of the Interior Talat Pasha, and between the ministries and provincial governors. Turkish official publications cite documents that:

• tie the relocation to military security and to specific regions, rather than to the whole Armenian population of the empire;
• instruct governors to provide for the safety, food, shelter and health of those relocated;
• order the prosecution of officials and others who committed abuses, with Ottoman records of courts-martial convened during the war against perpetrators of attacks on convoys.

Armenian and many international scholars, among them Vahakn Dadrian and Taner Akçam, argue that the published orders conceal or sit alongside parallel instructions, that protective language was formal rather than operational, and that the scale of mortality shows what policy was in practice. Other historians take positions between the two: Edward Erickson, for example, frames the relocation in its origins as a counterinsurgency measure while acknowledging very high civilian mortality. The disagreement is therefore not about whether the documents exist. It is about which ones are decisive and how to weigh them against testimony and the outcomes.

How Casualty Figures Were Produced and Contested

The baseline problem

No reliable wartime census exists for the Armenian population. The Ottoman census figures for 1914 put the Armenian population at roughly 1.3 million. The Armenian Patriarchate's pre-war estimate, and some foreign estimates, were higher, around 2 million. Turkish sources add that Armenians did not form a demographic majority in any province of eastern Anatolia and generally made up less than a fifth of the population in that region. Armenian historians accept that Armenians were a minority in the region but argue that Ottoman statistics undercounted them.

The range of estimates

• Turkish official historiography cites an Armenian death toll of roughly 300,000 and argues that higher figures were advanced in wartime propaganda.
• Armenian sources and many Western historians cite 1 to 1.5 million Armenian deaths.
• Independent demographers work with different baselines and different treatment of flight to the Caucasus, conversion, absorbed orphans and survivors, which is why estimates vary.

All sides agree that a large number of Ottoman Armenians died and that many died of disease, hunger, exposure and attack on the routes of relocation. They disagree on the scale and on the cause.

Muslim civilian losses

Türkiye stresses that any accounting must include the very large civilian losses among Muslim populations in eastern Anatolia and the Caucasus from fighting, famine, epidemic disease, flight and attacks during the war. Demographers such as Justin McCarthy have documented these losses in works such as Death and Exile (1995). Armenian and other scholars acknowledge civilian suffering on all sides but contest the way such losses are used to relativise what happened to Armenians. They argue that mass death in a war zone and a state policy directed at one community are not the same thing. This disagreement over comparison and proportion remains one of the most persistent in the field.

The 1948 Convention: What the Legal Test Requires

The UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was adopted on 9 December 1948 and entered into force on 12 January 1951. Its legal criteria shape any claim that uses the term in a legal sense:

• Article II defines genocide as specified acts committed 'with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such'. This is the requirement of dolus specialis.
• Article VI provides for trial by a competent court of the state where the act was committed, or by an international penal tribunal with jurisdiction.
• Article IX gives the International Court of Justice jurisdiction over disputes between parties on interpretation and application.

The ICJ has treated the intent requirement strictly, including in Croatia v. Serbia (2015), and held there that the Convention does not apply to acts before its entry into force. Türkiye relies on these points. It argues that the 1948 Convention is not retroactive, that intent has never been established before a competent tribunal in respect of 1915, and that political resolutions are not a substitute for a judicial finding.

The other side of the legal argument is also substantial:

• Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term in 1944, referred to the fate of the Armenians as a precedent.
• In 2003 the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ), commissioned in the context of the Turkish Armenian Reconciliation Commission, concluded that the Convention does not apply retroactively but that the events included elements that scholars and historians have characterised as genocide.
• The International Association of Genocide Scholars adopted a resolution in 1997 affirming the Armenian case as genocide.

In Perinçek v. Switzerland (Grand Chamber, 15 October 2015), the European Court of Human Rights held that criminalising denial of the Armenian genocide violated freedom of expression. The Court stated that it was not itself deciding whether the events constituted genocide as a legal matter. Both sides cite the judgment, for different reasons.

Key Players & Positions

Armenia and the diaspora

The Armenian government and diaspora institutions hold that the Ottoman government carried out a planned genocide in 1915–1916, and they observe 24 April as the day of remembrance. They cite Ottoman records, the 1919–1920 courts-martial, German and Austrian diplomatic reports, American consular testimony and survivor accounts. Armenia has said it is willing to normalise relations with Türkiye without preconditions, while holding that remembrance and recognition are matters it will continue to pursue. Some diaspora organisations treat recognition as a precondition for any settlement.

International and scholarly positions

A large share of historians of the late Ottoman Empire and of genocide scholars use the term genocide for 1915, and the IAGS has stated this formally. More than thirty states and many sub-national legislatures have adopted recognition measures. Examples include the French law of 2001, the German Bundestag resolution of 2 June 2016 and the United States presidential statement of 24 April 2021. Other historians, including some who work extensively in the Ottoman archives, emphasise the wartime context and caution about mapping the term onto a 1915 situation. The field is not unanimous in the way public commentary often suggests, but the majority of scholars specialising in genocide studies lean towards recognition.

European institutions

The European Parliament has adopted resolutions on the subject since 1987. Whether a legislature's resolution can establish a legal finding is the point on which Ankara and several European governments differ. Governments that avoid the term generally say historical judgment should be left to historians, a position that overlaps with Ankara's own argument.

🇹🇷 Official Policy · Primary Sources on the Record

Türkiye's Position

According to the Republic of Türkiye Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the events of 1915 are a shared tragedy that must be assessed by historians with full archival access and not by parliaments. The main points of Ankara's position are:

• A security measure, not extermination. The Turkish Foreign Ministry's statements on the 'Events of 1915' describe the Relocation and Resettlement Law of 27 May 1915, published in Takvim-i Vekayi on 1 June 1915, as a wartime security measure taken against armed revolt and collaboration with the invading Russian army. Ankara cites the ministry-level correspondence and the instructions for protecting convoys and prosecuting abuses as evidence of that character.
• The legal threshold has not been met. Ankara argues that under the 1948 Genocide Convention, genocide requires proof of dolus specialis and a determination by a competent court. It further argues that the Convention does not apply retroactively and that no court has made such a finding on 1915. The ECtHR's Perinçek ruling is cited for the point that historical debate on these events is protected expression.
• Open archives and a Joint Historical Commission. In April 2005 Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan wrote to Armenian President Robert Kocharyan proposing a joint commission of Turkish, Armenian and international historians, with open access to Ottoman, Armenian and third-country archives, and offering to accept its findings. Ankara describes this as the 'fair memory' (adil hafıza) approach. Armenia's response at the time was that an intergovernmental commission should address the whole range of bilateral issues, and the proposal did not go forward.
• Shared pain and recognition of suffering. On 23 April 2014 Prime Minister Erdoğan issued a statement offering condolences to the grandchildren of Armenians who lost their lives 'in the context of the early twentieth century'. He called the events a shared pain and stressed that all Ottoman subjects suffered in the war. Ankara rejects third-country parliamentary resolutions as political interference in a historical question.
• Normalisation without preconditions. Since 14 January 2022, Special Representatives Ambassador Serdar Kılıç and Armenian Deputy Speaker Ruben Rubinyan have held talks aimed at full normalisation and regional peace in the South Caucasus. The record of the Kılıç–Rubinyan talks covers their stages and outcomes.

The legal and historical basis Ankara cites includes the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, which guaranteed minority rights on the basis of equal citizenship, the Kars and Moscow treaties of 1921 that fixed the eastern border, and the terms of the 1948 Convention. Ankara also points to the terrorism directed at Turkish diplomats by ASALA and JCAG-ARA between 1973 and 1984 as a reason why the issue is politically sensitive, a framing that Armenian officials and scholars generally reject as unrelated to the historical question.

Source Comparison

The table shows how the main sources frame the same questions. It describes the framing, not the merits.

Question	Turkish primary and official sources	Armenian sources and many international scholars
Nature of the 1915 law	Wartime security and relocation measure, adopted 27 May 1915, published 1 June 1915	Legal cover for a policy of deportation and destruction
Role of committees	Hunchak (1887) and Dashnak (1890) used armed insurgency and cooperated with Russia	A minority movement, shaped by the Hamidian massacres and by reform failures; not representative of the community
Archival reading	Orders to protect convoys, prosecutions of abuses, regional scope	Parallel instructions, testimony, German and American reports, outcomes on the ground
Casualty figures	Around 300,000 Armenian deaths, with large Muslim civilian losses also to be counted	1–1.5 million Armenian deaths
Legal characterisation	No finding of dolus specialis by a competent court; Convention not retroactive	Events fit the Convention's definition; term used by IAGS, many states and the ICTJ's analysis
Proper forum	Historians, joint commission, open archives	Recognition by states; historians' consensus; Türkiye should acknowledge
Normalisation	Without preconditions; talks since 14 January 2022	Armenia open to normalisation; diaspora groups often link it to recognition

Media reporting commonly uses the term genocide as settled fact and treats the Turkish position as denial, while Turkish outlets and officials describe the question as unresolved history subject to proof. Neither shorthand reflects the details above. Readers can compare the framings against the documents on the sister publications Archive of Nations and Monitor of Nations, and read the law's text and context at The Worldlogue. The wider normalisation context is covered by Regional Order. How Irrecord handles competing positions is set out in its Editorial Principles.

Key Terms & Related Guides

• Events of 1915: Türkiye's official term for the wartime relocation of Ottoman Armenians and the associated violence and mortality.
• Sevk ve İskân Kanunu: the Relocation and Resettlement Law of 27 May 1915, published 1 June 1915 in Takvim-i Vekayi.
• Takvim-i Vekayi: the Ottoman official gazette.
• Hunchak and Dashnak: the Armenian revolutionary parties founded in 1887 and 1890.
• Dolus specialis: the specific intent to destroy a protected group 'as such', the defining element of genocide under Article II of the 1948 Convention.
• Competent tribunal: under Article VI, a court of the state where the act occurred or an international penal tribunal with jurisdiction.
• Adil hafıza (fair memory): Türkiye's term for a memory approach based on shared archival research and the acknowledgement of all communities' suffering.
• ASALA and JCAG-ARA: Armenian armed groups responsible for attacks on Turkish diplomats and others between 1973 and 1984.

Related guides on Irrecord: The Treaty Record: Lausanne, Kars, Montreux and the 1960 Cyprus Accords as Primary Documents, Kılıç and Rubinyan Talks Since 14 January 2022, Irrecord FAQ: Sources, Method and Perspective and About Irrecord. Sister analysis is also available at The Political Axis.

Perspective Note

Irrecord presents global and regional affairs with a dedicated perspective from Türkiye. Sections marked 'Türkiye's Position' reflect official Turkish policy and legal doctrines as stated by Turkish primary sources.

Irrecord Editorial Team