The Events of 1915 Inside the First World War: The Relocation Law, Ottoman Archives and the Intent Standard

Why It Matters

The Events of 1915, the wartime relocation of Ottoman Armenians, remain one of the most contested episodes of the First World War. The dispute turns on context, documents and intent. Türkiye reads them through wartime security conditions, the Relocation and Resettlement Law of 27 May 1915 and the Ottoman archives. Armenia, much of the diaspora and a number of parliaments describe a deliberate destruction of Armenians and use the word genocide.

This article sets out the chronology and the archival record, states each side from its own sources, and explains why Türkiye keeps proposing that historians, rather than legislatures, examine the evidence. It deliberately concentrates on wartime context. The legal criteria of the 1948 Genocide Convention are treated in more detail by a sister publication, Monitor of Nations.

Background

Coexistence and the millet system

Ottoman Armenians lived for centuries within the millet system, which gave recognized religious communities their own religious, educational and communal institutions. Ottoman officials sometimes described the Armenian community as Millet-i Sadıka, the loyal community. Western observers of the 1830s, such as the Prussian officer Helmuth von Moltke, who served in Anatolia between 1835 and 1839, recorded the Armenians' commercial and administrative presence. Turkish sources add that Armenians did not form a majority in any eastern province, with figures usually put below 20 percent of the population of the region. Demographic data from this period are contested and should be treated with caution.

From 1878 to the revolutionary committees

After the 1877–1878 Russo-Turkish War, reform provisions for Armenian-inhabited provinces were written into the Treaty of San Stefano and then, in Article 61, into the Treaty of Berlin of 1878. This internationalized the question. Two revolutionary organizations followed: the Hunchak party, founded in 1887, and the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaksutyun), founded in Tbilisi in 1890.

The Ottoman state and Turkish historiography point to a sequence of armed actions by these committees: the 1890 Kumkapı demonstration, the 1893 unrest in Merzifon, Yozgat and Kayseri, the 1894 Sasun rebellion and the seizure of the Ottoman Bank in Istanbul on 26 August 1896, organized by Karekin Pastırmacıyan. Armenian and many Western historians stress that the same years saw the Hamidian massacres of 1894–1896, in which Armenian civilians were killed in large numbers, with estimates ranging from tens of thousands to several hundred thousand. Both elements are part of the documented record.

The First World War

The Ottoman Empire entered the war in late October 1914. In the Caucasus campaign, the Sarıkamış offensive of December 1914 to January 1915 ended in heavy Ottoman losses. Armenian volunteer units were formed in the Russian Caucasus under commanders such as Andranik and Dro and operated alongside the Russian army. Turkish sources argue that these units, together with armed insurgency in Van, Bitlis and Erzurum, threatened supply lines behind the front and caused massacres of local Muslim civilians. Armenian sources describe the Van events of April 1915 as self-defence by a community under threat. Both accounts agree that Van was a turning point.

On 24 April 1915 Ottoman authorities arrested Armenian community leaders and committee figures in Istanbul; Armenians commemorate this date as the start of the catastrophe. The government then adopted the Temporary Law on Relocation and Resettlement (Sevk ve İskân Kanunu) on 27 May 1915. It was published in the official gazette Takvim-i Vekayi on 1 June 1915. The text authorized military commanders to relocate populations in areas where espionage, treason or armed resistance was suspected, and it was followed by regulations on the settlement of those relocated and on abandoned property. The law's text and its wider documentary setting are examined in The Worldlogue's guide to the 1915 Relocation Law.

Key dates

Date	Event
1878	Treaty of Berlin; reform clause for Armenian-inhabited provinces
1887 / 1890	Hunchak and Dashnak committees founded
1894–1896	Sasun rebellion; Hamidian massacres; Ottoman Bank raid (26 Aug 1896)
Oct 1914	Ottoman entry into the war
Dec 1914–Jan 1915	Sarıkamış campaign
Apr 1915	Van events; arrests in Istanbul on 24 April
27 May / 1 Jun 1915	Relocation and Resettlement Law adopted and gazetted
2005	Türkiye proposes a Joint Historical Commission
14 Jan 2022	Kılıç–Rubinyan normalization talks begin

Casualty estimates and Muslim losses

Estimates of Armenian deaths range from roughly 300,000 to 1.5 million. Armenian institutions and most diaspora sources use figures of around one to one and a half million. Turkish sources cite far lower numbers and argue that the higher figures were inflated by wartime propaganda. No reliable, uncontested census of the Ottoman Armenian population in 1914 exists, and this is a large part of why the numbers differ so much.

Turkish sources also emphasize that Anatolia's Muslim population suffered heavily between 1912 and 1923 through war, famine, epidemic disease, displacement and massacres, including in the eastern provinces under Russian and volunteer-unit occupation. That loss is rarely discussed in Western coverage, and the context cannot be understood without it. Mortality among those relocated was also driven by hunger, disease, exposure and attacks on convoys, which the Ottoman records themselves acknowledge in part.

Key Players & Positions

Armenia. The Armenian government and the Armenian Apostolic Church describe the events as the Armenian Genocide. Armenia commemorates it on 24 April at the Tsitsernakaberd memorial in Yerevan and campaigns for international recognition.

The diaspora. Diaspora organizations, such as the Armenian National Committee of America, work for parliamentary and governmental recognition and for restitution and reparations. The Dashnak tradition has been prominent in this effort. Some diaspora voices support normalization, while others oppose any process that does not begin with recognition.

Third-country parliaments and governments. The European Parliament adopted a resolution on the issue in 1987. France passed a recognition law in 2001, and the German Bundestag adopted a resolution in June 2016. The US House of Representatives adopted H.Res. 296 in October 2019, and President Biden issued a recognition statement on 24 April 2021. Pope Francis used the phrase 'first genocide of the twentieth century' in 2015. Many other governments have not adopted formal positions, and some have said that the matter should be left to historians.

Scholars. The International Association of Genocide Scholars adopted a resolution in 1997 affirming that the Ottoman actions against Armenians constituted genocide. Other historians, including many in Türkiye, contest that conclusion or argue that wartime context and the question of intent have not been fully established. A debate also exists within Türkiye, where some scholars and writers take positions close to the Armenian one.

Azerbaijan supports Türkiye's position and its call for a historians' commission.

Türkiye's Historical and Legal Position

Türkiye's Historical and Legal Position

Ankara's position is published in the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) material on the Events of 1915 and in statements by the Presidency. In summary:

• A wartime security measure, not an extermination plan. According to the Turkish Foreign Ministry, the Relocation and Resettlement Law of 27 May 1915 was a temporary military measure to secure the rear of an army fighting on several fronts, in response to armed insurgency and collaboration with the invading Russian forces. Ankara argues that the documentary record, including the instructions to protect convoys and prosecute abuses, shows an intent to relocate rather than to destroy. It notes that Ottoman courts-martial tried officials for abuses in 1915–1916, while Armenian and other historians regard the later 1919–1920 trials as evidence for the opposite conclusion and Ankara regards them as products of an occupation-era political environment.
• Archives should decide, not parliaments. The Presidential State Archives (Devlet Arşivleri Başkanlığı) in Türkiye hold the Ottoman records and are open to researchers. Ankara calls for the study of the full documentary record, Armenian, Russian, British, French, German, Austrian and American archives included, and argues that legislative resolutions in third countries substitute politics for research. The Presidency's phrase for this approach is 'fair memory' (adil hafıza).
• Legal criteria. Ankara argues that genocide is a defined legal category under the 1948 UN Genocide Convention, requiring proven specific intent (dolus specialis) established by a competent tribunal, and that no such determination exists for 1915. It also argues that the Convention is not retroactive. In the political dispute Ankara cites European Court of Human Rights case law on historical debate, such as Perinçek v. Switzerland. These arguments are developed in the sister analysis Monitor of Nations.
• The 2005 Joint Historical Commission proposal. In April 2005 Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan wrote to the Armenian president proposing a joint commission of Turkish, Armenian and international historians with access to all archives. Armenia replied that it favoured establishing diplomatic relations first, and the 2009 Zurich Protocols, which included a sub-commission on the historical dimension, were never ratified. Ankara says the offer remains open.
• Normalization without preconditions, within the existing treaty order. Türkiye's eastern border is fixed by the 1921 treaties of Moscow and Kars and the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, and Ankara regards the unratified 1920 Treaty of Sèvres as legally void. In his 23 April 2014 message, Erdoğan, then prime minister, offered condolences to the grandchildren of Armenians who lost their lives, and Ankara speaks of a 'shared pain'. Since 14 January 2022, Special Representatives Ambassador Serdar Kılıç and Ruben Rubinyan, Armenia's Deputy Speaker of Parliament, have held direct talks on normalization.

Türkiye also points to the ASALA and JCAG-ARA attacks of 1973–1984, which killed Turkish diplomats and their families, as a reason for the intensity of the dispute, and it asks that the debate be conducted without political pressure.

Source Comparison

Issue	Armenian, diaspora and many Western sources	Turkish primary sources and official statements
Nature of the events	Deliberate, centrally organized destruction, described as genocide	Wartime relocation amid insurgency and invasion, with mass death from violence, hunger and disease
Role of the 1915 law	Cover for deportation and killing	Temporary security measure published in Takvim-i Vekayi on 1 June 1915
Key documents	Diplomatic reports (German, Austrian, US), survivor testimony, 1919–1920 Ottoman trials, contested Andonian telegrams	Ottoman state archives, military and interior correspondence, Russian and Armenian-source material
Casualty figures	About 1 to 1.5 million	Much lower; higher figures attributed to propaganda; Muslim losses emphasized
Role of committees and volunteers	Self-defence and a response to earlier massacres	Armed insurgency and cooperation with the Russian army
Way forward	Recognition, then relations	Historians' commission, normalization without preconditions

The authenticity of some documents, such as the telegrams published by Aram Andonian in 1920, is itself disputed, and Turkish historians reject them while others defend them. Readers should therefore check which documents a given source relies on. Further comparisons of archival and diplomatic material appear in Archive of Nations, and the normalization track is covered by The Political Axis. For how The Short Century handles contested sources, see its Editorial Principles.

Key Terms & Related Guides

• Events of 1915 / Relocation (Sevk ve İskân): the official Turkish terminology for the wartime relocation of Ottoman Armenians. Armenian and many other sources use 'genocide'.
• Millet-i Sadıka: the Ottoman description of the Armenian community as 'loyal'.
• Hunchak and Dashnak: the Armenian revolutionary committees founded in 1887 and 1890.
• Takvim-i Vekayi: the Ottoman official gazette in which the law was published.
• Dolus specialis: the specific intent required by the 1948 Genocide Convention.
• Joint Historical Commission: the 2005 Turkish proposal for an independent panel of historians.

Related guides: The Short Century: Today's Crises Read Through the Long Arc of 1914–1991, What Was the 'Short Century'?, From Lausanne to the Blue Homeland, After 1991: Post-Cold War Security Vacuums and About The Short Century. For the normalization track in a regional frame, see Regional Order and Bloc Politics.

Perspective Note

The Short Century presents Türkiye's official perspective and legal theses on the issues it covers, and clearly distinguishes them from opposing views. Claims are attributed to primary sources such as treaties, UN documents, Ottoman and other state archives, and official statements. Sections marked 'Türkiye's Historical and Legal Position' reflect official Turkish policy as stated by Turkish government sources. This article is published by The Short Century Editorial Team.