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The number of Ottoman Armenian deaths between 1914 to 1921 during the Armenian Genocide and what followed during the Turkish War of Independence is a subject of controversy. Most estimates of related Armenian deaths between 1915 to 1918 range from 600,000 to 1.5 million.

Armenian casualties from 1915 to 1917-18

Ottoman and Turkish estimates

The statistics provided by Djemal

The official Ottoman statistics compiled for the period between 1915 to 1917-18 were of 800,000 killed. This figure originates from Djemal's bureau’s. The results have been published in the official Ottoman gazette.

It was allegedly the result of a commission formed by the interior minister Mustafa Arif. It is said that they relied on reports and statistics they have compiled in a period of two months, in March 14, 1919, the results were made public by Djemal. This same figure has been mentioned in Rauf Orbay's own memoirs. The initial results apparently represented those that were “massacred” during the deportation, without any indication as to the total number of people having perished; Mustafa Kemal, during a conversation he had with Major General Harbord, the chief of the American Military Mission to Armenia, in September 1919, repeated the same number. The figure of 800,000, it should be noted, discludes Armenian soldiers liquidated from the Ottoman army in the early stages of the genocide, as well as discluding the number of women and both male and female children assimilated into Turkish families.

However, following the dissolution of the military tribunal, those figures were reinterpreted. The Turkish author Taner Akçam refers to a Turkish military published by Lt. Col. Nihat in 1928, in which the figure of 800,000 no longer represented those as "massacred" or "killed", but simply those who perished. Then the historian Bayur in a famous work wrote: "800,000 Armenians and 200,000 Greeks died as a result of deportations or died in labor brigades." Bayur concluded: "According to our official sources, these numbers are correct."

Other Ottoman sources

While the official figures were of 800,000 killed, there were many unofficial numbers presented during the war by some Ottoman authorities--Talat, for instance, presented the figure of 300,000-- but there is no indication as to how those figures were obtained. This figure is currently the one used often by the Turkish government officials.

Ottoman allies estimates

Germany

Germany provides highest estimates of Armenian losses during the war even though they were the Ottoman Empire's ally. Some speculate that it was due to their access to murder sites.

A report provided that as soon as February 1916, 1.5 million Armenians were destroyed. A report in May 27, 1916, by Foreign Office Intelligence Director Erzberger provided the same figure, as did an October 4, 1916 report by the German Interim Ambassador to Turkey, Radowitz, again with 1.5 million as the estimate of Armenian's having perished. It seems that the generally cited 1.5 million figure had originated from those German sources. German major Endres, who served in the Turkish army, and who has estimated the number of Armenians having lost their lives during the war to be 1.2 million. The same figure was mentioned during the Yozgat trial, as well as presented during the Permanent Peoples Tribunal and often cited elsewhere.

Austria-Hungary

The Austrian consul at Trabzon and Samsun, Dr. Kwatkiowski on March 13, 1918 reported to Vienna restricting himself to the six eastern provinces, Trabzon and Samsun district, that from the million deported, most died, while Austria-Hungary's Adrianople (Edirne) consul Dr. Nadamlenzki reported that for the entire Ottoman Empire 1.5 million were already deported. The Austrian Vice Marashal Pomiankowski estimated the Armenian losses to be about a million.

The allies and neutral parties

Arnold J. Toynbee

Encyclopædia Britannica references the research made by Arnold J. Toynbee, an intelligence officer of the British Foreign Office during World War I, who estimated a death toll of 600,000. Toynbee calculated that approximately 1,800,000 Armenians had lived in Anatolia prior to the war, and came to the conclusion that around 600,000 Armenians died or were massacred during deportation, possibly 600,000 more survived in exile, and another 600,000 either escaped or went into hiding. By independent calculation, Justin McCarthy has arrived at the same number of deaths, and many historians either cite Toynbee directly or provide similar estimates.

Arnold J. Toynbee presented 600,000 for 1915, but excludes most of 1916 and the following years, as professor Melson writes: "Toynbee’s description and analysis stop with the winter of 1915 and the spring of 1916, by which time the bulk of the Armenian population has been killed or deported. As valuable as it is, this work cannot take into account what subsequently happened to the deportees in 1916, nor can it take into account the Armenians who were deported from some of the major urban areas after 1916."

Justin McCarthy estimates

Justin McCarthy calculated an estimate of the pre-war Armenian population, then subtracted his estimate of survivors, arriving at a figure of a little less than 600,000 for Armenian casualties for the period 1914 to 1922. In a more recent essay, he projected that if the Armenian records of 1913 were accurate, 250,000 more deaths should be added, for a total of 850,000. Frédéric Paulin criticized McCarthy's works, comparing his methodology with Rassinier's method in calculating the European Jewry losses during World War II.

The King Crane Commission

The King Crane Commission provides a million for the losses during the war in one cases in the same work, but in the same commission, it is reported that the Hamidian massacres are included. Wherever or not, the Armenian casualties were under evaluated to increase purposely the Armenian population to support the foundation of an Armenia is still a matter of debate, since the Armenian losses of a million during the war has been added for what the commission call "justice" in one cases, and in what regards the Armenian population, the Adana massacres, and Hamidian massacres resulting to what appears to be an attempt of population maximization. The Armenian estimates were on the same direction. At times, they were even as low as 500,000 when the Armenian high mortality was threatening the possibility of founding an Armenia compromising as well of Ottoman territories, and in other instances to over a million. The United States figures for the period between 1915 to 1917 varies widely, but most figures contend to a million or over.

League of Nations

The League of Nations provided a million as a figure, but the list of refugees in the Caucasus and Russian Armenia who were not from Ottoman Empire was not clearly defined, which suggest that the list of 400,000 to 420,000 Ottoman Armenian's could have contained Armenian's who were possibly not in proper term Ottoman Armenian, which may explain why other estimates projected the casualties over the million drawn by the League.

Armenian casualties, 1917-18 to 1921

While the Ottoman official statistics covered 1917-18, and some of German figures, most other figures excluded them. Another problem remains, as to the availability of the sources for what followed 1917. More recent scholars have called this period the second phase of the Armenian Genocide. Melson, for instance, provide' a rough estimate of 500,000. On the other hand, those estimates have no archival grounds, for this reason some researchers considers any such figures could be near to the actual casualty figures or far from it.

Armenian casualties outside of the Ottoman borders during Ottoman invasion

Few commissions were formed though, such as the investigations for Kars and Alexandropol. The Alexandropol investigation by its nature is seen as the most serious such endeavor. It presented 60,000 as directed killed, in a total of 150,000 victims which condition would have ultimately led to their death sentences. But the investigation apparently came to an end abruptly. The Germans on the other hand, not presenting any numbers, have reported Russian Armenia condition, in what they considered as an Ottoman attempt to destroy it. Without taking in account the Ottoman excursion of what was considered as Persian Armenia.

Ottoman Armenian casualties

Most of the victims could be counted in Cilicia, as well as the Eastern zone, and without ignoring Smyrna (İzmir) during what was reported as massacres and what followed with the burning of the Armenian and Greek quarters of the city (see Great Fire of Smyrna). While the total of casualties in this category is estimated to tens of thousands to over hundred of thousand, the number of victims is not well established.

The Armenian genocide: total Armenian casualties, 1914 to 1921

While there is no clear consensus as to how many Armenians lost their lives during what is called the Armenian genocide and what followed, there seems to be a consensus among Western scholars with the exception of few dissident and Turkish national historians, as to when covering all the period between 1914 to 1921, over a million Armenian might have perished, and the tendency seem recently to be, either presenting 1.2 million as figure or even 1.5 million, while more moderately, "over a million" is presented, as the Turkish historian Fikret Adanir provides as estimation, but excludes what followed 1917.

Armenian casualties revisited

Far from finding the exact figure of Armenian casualties, some researchers have at least tried to provide some figures of losses during the war and what followed based on some sources. But most of it is rough estimates or are based on calculations of others. An example here might be the cases of Justin McCarthy, since he is one of the rare researcher that has worked with Ottoman records, various Ottomanists have recycled his figures. Scholarly consensus, however, has largely followed the conclusions presented by Levon Marashlian's study (arriving at a figure of 1.2 million), which claimed that McCarthy's approach suffers from a fatal methodological flaw: in basing his results on inaccurate records. Marashlian maintains there was a reciprocal undercounting on the Ottoman's government's part on the one hand, and underreporting by Armenians, on the other. McCarthy, nonetheless, claims that his results and the Ottoman adult male records were accurate. Others go on to criticize McCarthy in not only having undercounted the prewar Armenian population, but also overcounting the survivors. McCarthy, for his part, argues that his works are too easily labeled by academia as a Turkish-apologist, and complains of a lack of scholarly debate.

See also

• Armenian Genocide
• Ottoman Armenia
• Ottoman Armenian population
• Turkish War of Independence

Notes

1. Ottoman Gazette Takvimi Vekâyi No. 3909, July 21 1920, pp. 3, 4. Cited published in Alemdar, March 15 1919
2. Rauf Orbay, Rauf Orbay'ın Hatıraları, (Vol. 3), Yakın Tarihimiz, İstanbul, 1962 p. 179, he writes as to what Mustafa Kemal told him about the Armenians.
3. Yakm Tarihimiz, 3, (1962), p. 179, cited in Vahakn N. Dadrian, The History of the Armenian Genocide: Ethnic Conflict from the Balkans to Anatolia to the Caucasus, Providence, RI: Berghan Books, 1995, p. 234
4. Yusuf Hikmet Bayur, Türk Inkilabi Tarihi, Vol. III, Sec. IV, p. 787
5. Written on July 2 1916 and submitted to the Foreign Office on July 14 1916 titled: Volkswirtschaftliche Studien in der Türkei, A. A. Türkei, 134/35, A18613.
6. A.A. Türkei 183/42, A13959, May 27 1916 report.
7. A.A. Türkei 183/44. A27493, October 4 1916 report.
8. Carl Franz Endres, Die Türkei. Munich, CH Beck, 1918, p. 161
9. Cited in Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Volume 11, Number 1, Spring 1997, Vahakn N. Dadrian, The Turkish Military Tribunal's Prosecution of the Authors of the Armenian Genocide: Four Major Court-Martial Series, Genocide Study Project, H. F. Guggenheim Foundation.
10. Gérard Chaliand, Le Crime de silence : le génocide des Arméniens: Tribunal permanent des peuples,  ; pref. de Pierre Vidal-Naquet, Flammarion, 1984.
11. Austrian Foreign Ministry Archives 12 Türkei/380, ZI.17/pol and 12 Türkei/463, Z.94/P.
12. Joseph Pomiankowski, Der Zusammenbruch des Ottomanischen Reiches, Graz, Austria, 1969, p. 160(originally printed in 1928)
13. Encyclopædia Britannica: Death toll of the Armenian Massacres
14. Encyclopædia Britannica: Death toll of the Armenian Massacres
15. Encyclopædia Britannica: Death toll of the Armenian Massacres
16. The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, Documents presented to Viscount Grey of Fallodon, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs By Viscount Bryce, London 1916
17. Robert Melson, Revolution and Genocide: On the Origins of the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust, University Of Chicago Press, October 15 1992, p. 147
18. Justin McCarthy, The End of Ottoman Anatolia, in Muslims and Minorities: The Population of Ottoman Anatolia and the End of the Empire, New York Univ. Press, 1983.
19. Justin McCarthy, The Population of the Ottoman Armenians, in The Armenians in the Late Ottoman Period, The Turkish Historical Society For The Council Of Culture, Arts And Publications Of The Grand National Assembly Of Turkey, Ankara, 2001, pp. 65-86
20. Frédéric Paulin, Négationnisme et théorie des populations stables : le cas du génocide arménien, in Hervé Lebras (dir.), L’Invention des populations. Biologie, Idéologie et politique, Editions Odile Jacob, 2000.
21. Harry N. Howard, The King-Crane Commission: An American Inquiry in the Middle East, Khayats, 1963 p. 212 includes them all, but The King-Crane Commission Report, August 28 1919 is more conflicting in one instances, where it consider the million as the result of the war,(as if excluding the other massacres) and there is no way to know wherever or not it was a mistake.
22. A. P. Hacobian, Armenia and the War: An Armenian's Point of View with an Appeal to Britain and the Coming Peace Conference, George H. Doran Company, New York. 1918. He presents as range from 500,000 to 800,000, and presents the cases of the possibility of the construction of an Armenia. How far those politically motivated figures influenced commissions reports of mortality, such as those of the King Crane is not well known, apparently it was considered due to Mr. Aharonian and Boghos Nubar presentation of the cases, in this regard, it is relevant to read the British views on the problem of Kurdistan, and on Boghos Nubar Pasha, in December 1919, see United Kingdom, Foreign Office, Documents on British Foreign Policy 1919-1939. Edited by E. L. Woodward and Rohan Butler. First Series ( London, H. M. S. O., 1952), IV, 920-24. Later cited as British Documents, 1919-1939.
23. Boghos Nubar, the head of the Armenian delegation at the Paris Peace conference, wrote in The Times in 30 January 1919, that “over a million out of a total Armenian population… have lost their lives in and through the war.” Apparently, when it was noted that a possibility of an Armenia as wanted by the Armenian delegation was impossible, the Armenian delegation changed it's tactic, as to not minimise the number of victims, but rather use them and indirectly accuse the allies, and expect that they might consider Armenia as reparation for the losses.
24. The extend of the Armenian tragedy is described in Fridtjof Nansen(Nobel Peace Prize and then League of Nations High commissioner) book: “Armenia and the Near East” translted from (l'Arménie et le Proche Orient, Paris, 1923). Nansen conclude his work by the following remarks: "Woe to the Armenians, that they were ever drawn into European politics! It would have been better for them if the name of Armenia had never been uttered by any European diplomatist."
25. See: League of Nations: Assembly: Fifth Committee published reports: Armenian and Russian Refugee Problems; Report... Geneva: np, 1926. Settlement of Armenian Refugees; Report... Geneva: Imprimerie Kundig, 1926. Transfer of Armenian Refugees to the Caucasus and Creation of an Armenian National Home in That Region; Report... Geneva: np, 1924.
26. In his book: Revolution and Genocide: On the Origins of the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust, University Of Chicago Press, October 15 1992
27. Soviet Archival records: CGAKA, f. 109, op. 3, d. 241, 1. 12. / Politarxiv MID SSSR., inv. No. 53351, 1.14. and Arxiv vnesnej politiki SSSR, f. 132, op. 4, p. 6, d. 14, 1. 52.
28. Otto von Lossow, Major General, Military attaché reported that the Turkish government was also attempting "the total extermination of the Armenians in Transcaucasia also" (German Foreign Ministry Archives. A. A. Türkei 183/51, A20698, May 15 1918. His first report.) He also report: "Talàt's government party wants to destroy all Armenians, not only in Turkey, but also outside Turkey."(Deutsches Zentralarchiv (Potsdam) Bestand Reichskanzlei No. 2458/9, Blatt 202, June 3 1918 report, p. 2.)
29. See: Stanley Elphinstone Kerr, The Lions of Marash: Personal Experiences with American Near East Relief, 1919-1922 (New York: State University of New York, 1973); Susan E. Kerr, Letters of Stanley E. Kerr: Volunteer Work with the "Near East Relief" among Armenians in Marash, 1919-1920, Edited and with a Historical Introduction to the Turkish-Armenian Conflict (Diss., History Honors Program, Oberlin College, 1980)
30. George Horton, The Blight of Asia, Bobbs-Merril Company, 1926. Also, Dobkin, Marjorie Housepian, SMYRNA 1922: The Destruction of a City, Kent State U Press, 1988.
31. Levon Marashlian, Politics and Demography: Armenians, Turks and Kurds in the Ottoman Empire Zoryan Institute (1991) ISBN 0-916431-30-4

• Armenian Genocide
• History of the Ottoman Empire
• Demographics of the Ottoman Empire
• Turkish War of Independence