Turkish researchers argue that most of the Armenians died during the First World War years due to the bad war conditions. According to the Turkish sources most of the Ottoman Armenians died in famine, bad weather conditions and epidemic diseases. The Ottoman documents and modern Turkish experts accept that many Armenians were killed in communal clashes. Kurds and Circassians in particular attacked the Armenian villages in order to get valuables. Mostly the Kurdish tribes also organized counter attacks against the Armenian civilians to take revenge. However most of the loses were due to the bad war circumstances. The Armenian historians generally do not accept ‘bad war circumstances’ and they argue that “epidemic diseases cannot remove hundred and thousands of Armenian people. They tend to believe in that Turks massacred all the Armenian population. However the scholarly articles prove the reverse. For instance researcher Ellen Marie Lust-Okar describe the circumstances the Armenians faced when they arrived in Syria, one of the Ottoman provinces at that time:

“Diseases spread rapidly. In Aleppo, more than 35,000 persons were said to have died from typhus between August 1916 and August 1917 alone. In almost all villages between Aleppo and Mosul 50 percent of the population is believed to have died, and in the district of Ra’sal-‘Ayn, this was to have reached 88 per cent. That thousands of Armenians and Arabs alike perished during the first years of immigration…” (Ellen Marie Lust-Okar, ‘Failure of Collaboration: Armenian Refugees in Syria’, Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 32, No. 1, January 1996, pp. 53-68, p. 57).

Not only the Armenians and Arabs but also the Turks and the Kurds were also deeply affected by the bad weather, epidemics and famine. The Ottoman documents clearly show that more Muslim people died that the Armenian people due to these reasons during these years. Of course the Ottoman Government was responsible for all these loses, yet we have to accept that they were not able to provide the basic needs under the military attacks from almost all directions. The Armenian collaboration with the occupying Russians in the Eastern Anatolia and with the French armies in the Cilicia and the south worsened the security of the state. Thus the Istanbul Government decided to relocate the Armenian population to the remote part of the Empire. As a result, most of the Armenians from the Eastern and south eastern part of the State were forced to locate in the Syrian province in order to cut the link between the Armenians and the Russians. The decision obviously made the immigrating Armenians more vulnerable to the diseases, famine and weather conditions. However all these cannot be classified as systematic slaughter or genocide. Istanbul Armenians continued their normal life and many Armenians were among the richest and most powerful Ottoman citizens in Istanbul and some other parts of the State. Ten thousands of the Armenians continued to live in Turkey even the Ottoman Empire collapsed and modern Turkey was established. Even some of the relocated Armenians in 1915 returned later to their own towns.

Another reason made the life worse for the ordinary Armenian people in the Ottoman Empire was the Armenian nationalist fanatics. The extremist Armenian nationalist fist hit the Armenian population. The armed Armenians killed more Armenian than the Turks between 1900-1911. They terrorized the relations between the Muslims and the Armenians. The extremist attacks against the Turkish, Kurdish and Circassian villages caused counter attacks. Many Muslim women were raped, killed and tortured. The conservative Kurdish villages were provoked by these Armenian attacks, and the security forces were not able to stop the communal attacks under the world war conditions. The clashes reached its peak when the Armenian extremists occupied the Van province. The Armenians were uniformed and armed. They had an independent Armenia flag and they handled the city to the occupying Russian forces. Though most of the Armenian population were not extremist and not in co-operation with the occupying forces, the irregular Kurdish gang counter-attacks, defense attacks and revenge campaigns badly affected the ordinary Armenians as well. At the end of the day more than 520,000 Muslims were slaughtered by the armed Armenian groups and many Armenians were killed by the Kurdish and Circassian tribes (asirets).

Today there are more than 100,000 Armenians in Istanbul. They have their own churches, schools and newspapers. They can freely educate their people in Armenian language, and the Armenian Patriarch provide many services special to the Armenians. Of course the Turkey Armenians also have problems like any other Turkish citizen, yet the European Union membership process has helped a lot in improving the rights. Even the Armenia citizens now prefer Turkey to live and work instead of Republic of Armenia. More than 70.000 Armenia citizens work in Turkey, mostly in Istanbul city with no serious problem.

Class Notes, November 2006, JTW