1915 Documents Desk: What the Ottoman Archives, Wartime Orders and Legal Standards Establish

Why It Matters

The documents on the Events of 1915 firmly establish a wartime relocation law, mass displacement and very large loss of life among Ottoman Armenians. They do not produce agreement on how to characterize those events in law. The 1948 Genocide Convention requires proof of specific intent (dolus specialis). Türkiye argues the archival record does not meet that threshold, while Armenia, many scholars and a number of parliaments argue that it does. This pillar separates what the record shows, what historians dispute and what each side argues, so readers can check the primary sources themselves.

Politı Archive follows a “document first, interpretation second” method, described in our Editorial Principles. Türkiye uses the term Events of 1915 in official usage, and this guide follows that terminology while attributing the competing vocabulary to those who use it.

Background

The documentary story begins well before 1915: in the Ottoman millet system, in the 1878 diplomatic settlement, and in the political violence of the 1890s. Each stage left its own paper trail.

A long coexistence and a changing political context

Turkish official historiography stresses nearly a millennium of coexistence between Turks and Armenians under the Great Seljuks, the Anatolian principalities and the Ottoman Empire. Armenians held religious, commercial and administrative positions, and the community was historically described as the millet-i sadıka (loyal community). Ankara also points out that Armenians were not a demographic majority in the provinces of Eastern Anatolia, where it says they made up well under 20 percent of the population. Armenian historians counter that Armenians formed majorities in particular districts and that their share is understated by Ottoman statistics. Population baselines are therefore one of the first points of dispute.

1878 to 1896: foreign patronage, committees and the Ottoman Bank raid

After the 1877–1878 Russo-Turkish War, Article 16 of the Treaty of San Stefano and then Article 61 of the 1878 Congress of Berlin treaty placed Ottoman reforms in the Armenian-inhabited provinces under the scrutiny of the Great Powers. Armenian delegations, including figures such as Mkrtich Khrimian, had sought such protection. Ankara argues that this foreign patronage politicized the community and encouraged revolutionary organization. Armenian historians argue that it reflected real grievances over taxation, land seizures and insecurity, which the reforms never addressed.

Two revolutionary parties emerged:

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

The Turkish record lists the 1890 Kumkapı demonstration, the 1893 unrest in Merzifon, Yozgat and Kayseri, the 1894 Sasun rebellion and the 26 August 1896 raid on the Ottoman Bank in Istanbul. Ankara describes these as armed insurgency aimed at provoking European intervention. The bank raid was carried out by Dashnak militants under Karekin Pastırmacıyan. Armenian and international historians add that the 1894–1896 period also saw large-scale massacres of Armenians in several provinces and in Istanbul itself, with estimates in the tens of thousands or more. Both sets of facts are documented, and they are interpreted differently.

1914–1915: war, the Russian front and collaboration

The Ottoman Empire entered the First World War in late 1914. After the Sarıkamış defeat in the winter of 1914–1915, the eastern front was exposed to the Russian army. Turkish sources document that Armenian volunteer units, associated with commanders such as Antranik and Dro, fought alongside the Russian army. They also document armed Fedayi activity behind Ottoman lines, sabotage of supply routes, and attacks on Muslim villages in the Van, Erzurum and Bitlis regions. The Van uprising of April 1915 is the best-known flashpoint. Ottoman and Turkish sources call it a rebellion, while Armenian sources describe it as self-defense after violence against the local Armenian population. Armenian leaders on the Ottoman side were not uniform: some Armenian representatives and the Ottoman parliament's Armenian members opposed the revolutionary option, a point that both sides cite.

On 24 April 1915, Ottoman authorities arrested several hundred Armenian community figures in Istanbul. Armenia commemorates this date as Genocide Remembrance Day. The Allied powers (Britain, France and Russia) issued a joint declaration on 24 May 1915 warning that they would hold Ottoman officials personally responsible for “crimes against humanity and civilization”. That declaration is an early diplomatic source and is cited by Armenian authorities as contemporaneous evidence.

The 27 May 1915 law

The Council of Ministers approved the Temporary Law on Measures to Be Taken by the Military Against Those Who Oppose the Government in Wartime on 27 May 1915. It was published in the official gazette Takvim-i Vekayi on 1 June 1915 and is popularly known as the Sevk ve İskân (Relocation and Resettlement) Law. A related decision of 30 May 1915 regulated the practical resettlement of relocated Armenians, and legislation of June and September 1915 governed abandoned property. Our close reading is in The 27 May 1915 Relocation and Resettlement Law: A Close Reading of the Takvim-i Vekayi Publication, and a sister-site analysis is at The Worldlogue: The 1915 Relocation and Resettlement Law.

What the text and its implementing orders show is not in dispute:

• Military commanders were authorized to relocate populations in areas deemed security risks and to respond with force to resistance.
• Relocation was directed mainly at Armenians in eastern and southeastern provinces, and Armenians in cities such as Istanbul and Izmir were largely not relocated.
• Destinations were in the south, including Syrian provinces, and relocated persons’ property was subject to separate administrative rules.

The interpretation is where the parties diverge. Turkish sources describe the law as a temporary military necessity and internal security measure, supported by correspondence between the War Minister (Enver Pasha) and the Interior Minister (Talat Pasha), including orders to protect convoys and to punish abuses. Armenian and many international historians describe the relocation as the instrument of destruction, noting that convoys were attacked, that deaths from violence, exposure, famine and disease were massive, and that the abandoned-property legislation enabled expropriation.

After the war: tribunals and treaties

The Ottoman courts-martial of 1919–1920, held under Allied occupation, tried some officials, and their verdicts appeared in the Takvim-i Vekayi. Armenian and international scholars treat these as significant evidence. Turkish sources argue that they were held under occupation pressure and are procedurally unreliable. Some 140 or so Ottoman detainees were held by Britain in Malta in 1919–1921 and were released in 1921 without trial. Turkish authorities cite this as showing that no sufficient evidence was found, and others attribute the outcome to political considerations and prisoner exchange.

The Treaty of Sèvres (10 August 1920) was never ratified. The territorial settlement rests on the Treaty of Alexandropol (1920), the Treaty of Moscow (16 March 1921), the Treaty of Kars (13 October 1921) and the Treaty of Lausanne (24 July 1923), the last of which also guaranteed non-Muslim minority rights on the basis of equal citizenship. See The Treaty Vault for how these texts are read.

Dated chronology

Date	Document or event	Why it matters
13 July 1878	Treaty of Berlin, Article 61	Internationalizes the question of Armenian reforms
1887 / 1890	Hunchak and Dashnak founded	Armed revolutionary politics begins
26 Aug 1896	Ottoman Bank raid	Followed by violence against Armenians in Istanbul
24 Apr 1915	Arrests in Istanbul	Date of Armenian commemoration
24 May 1915	Allied joint declaration	Early diplomatic reference to “crimes against humanity”
27 May / 1 Jun 1915	Relocation law, then Takvim-i Vekayi	Central state legal text
1919–1921	Ottoman courts-martial and Malta detentions	Contested postwar legal record
1921 / 1923	Kars and Lausanne	Established borders and minority provisions
9 Dec 1948	UN Genocide Convention adopted	Defines intent-based legal test
10 Apr 2005	Türkiye’s Joint Commission offer	Historians and archives proposal
14 Jan 2022	Special representatives meet	Start of current normalization talks

Key Players & Positions

The principal actors disagree on legal characterization, not on the existence of mass suffering. The table of positions below attributes each view to its own source.

Armenia and Armenian institutions

The Republic of Armenia’s official position, reflected in its Ministry of Foreign Affairs and in Article 11 of the 23 August 1990 Declaration of Independence, is that the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire were victims of genocide and that international recognition is a national task. Armenian institutions such as the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute rely on Ottoman documents, diplomatic reports, survivor testimony and the postwar tribunals. They also cite Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term “genocide” and referred to the Armenian case among his examples.

Scholars and parliaments

The International Association of Genocide Scholars adopted resolutions in 1997 and 2007 affirming that the events constituted genocide. A number of states and legislatures have recognized genocide, including the United States in a presidential statement of 24 April 2021 and the German Bundestag in 2016. Turkish authorities reject these resolutions as political acts by bodies that are not courts.

Historians who dispute interpretation

Historians do not form two blocs. Scholars such as Vahakn Dadrian and Taner Akçam argue that Ottoman and other documents show central planning and intent. Others, such as Guenter Lewy, accept mass atrocity and large-scale death but argue that the surviving documents do not prove a centrally directed extermination plan. Contested items include the authenticity of the so-called Andonian telegrams (published in 1920), the role of the Special Organization (Teşkilât-ı Mahsusa), and how to interpret ciphered orders.

International courts

The International Court of Justice (Bosnia v. Serbia, 2007) held that genocidal intent must be established as the only reasonable inference from conduct, and (Croatia v. Serbia, 2015) confirmed that the Genocide Convention does not apply retroactively to events before it entered into force on 12 January 1951. Armenian scholars respond that genocide was already a crime under customary international law and that the legal label can be used historically even if no court has jurisdiction.

The European Court of Human Rights addressed the issue indirectly in Perinçek v. Switzerland (Grand Chamber, 15 October 2015). It found that Switzerland had violated Article 10 (freedom of expression) by convicting a Turkish politician for denying that the Events of 1915 were genocide. The Court stated that it was not called upon to decide whether they constituted genocide, and it based its decision on the content and context of the statements, which it found did not amount to incitement to hatred. Both sides cite the judgment: Ankara for its recognition that the question of legal characterization is open and that historical debate is protected, and Armenian authorities for the Court’s acceptance that the mass suffering was real.

🇹🇷 Official Policy · Primary Sources · Archive Record

Türkiye's Position on the Record

Türkiye's Position on the Record (as stated by Turkish government sources)

• Fair memory and the historians’ route. According to the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Events of 1915 are a shared tragedy that should be examined by historians, not decided by parliaments. In April 2014, then Prime Minister Erdoğan issued a message of condolence to the descendants of Armenians who lost their lives, acknowledging the pain of the period. Ankara calls this approach adil hafıza (fair memory), meaning that all communities’ losses, including large Muslim civilian losses in Anatolia and the Caucasus, are remembered.
• The 2005 offer. Ankara states that in April 2005 it proposed to Armenia an independent Joint Historical Commission of Turkish, Armenian and international historians with full access to Ottoman, Armenian and third-country archives. It argues that Armenia’s preference for intergovernmental talks rather than an expert commission left the offer unanswered. The text and history are in The 2005 Joint Historical Commission Proposal and the 2022 Normalization Talks.
• Relocation as a wartime security measure. The Foreign Ministry’s position is that the 27 May 1915 law was a temporary wartime measure against armed rebellion and collaboration with the invading Russian army, and that orders in the Ottoman archives instructed protection of convoys and punishment of abuses. Ankara acknowledges that many Armenians died during the relocations but rejects the claim of a plan of extermination. It cites wartime figures in the range of 300,000 and argues that the higher figures of 1–1.5 million were inflated by propaganda while Muslim losses were ignored.
• The legal test. Ankara argues that under Article II of the 1948 Convention, genocide is a defined legal category that requires proof of specific intent and a determination by a competent international tribunal, which has never occurred for the Events of 1915. It also notes the non-retroactivity of the Convention and cites Perinçek v. Switzerland as confirmation that the question is a matter of open historical debate and not settled law.
• Borders and normalization without preconditions. Türkiye holds that its eastern frontier is settled by the treaties of Moscow, Kars and Lausanne and that the unratified Sèvres draft has no legal force. It supports normalization with Armenia without preconditions, a process re-launched on 14 January 2022 when Special Representatives Serdar Kılıç and Ruben Rubinyan met, and it has also called on Armenia to remove territorial references such as Article 11 of its 1990 declaration.

Legal and historical basis: the 1948 Genocide Convention (Articles I–II), the Kars (1921) and Lausanne (1923) treaties, the Takvim-i Vekayi publication of 1 June 1915, and the ECtHR’s Grand Chamber judgment of 15 October 2015.

Source Comparison

The two narratives use the same categories of evidence but weigh them differently. The table summarizes how each framing treats the key sources.

Issue	Armenian and international genocide-studies framing	Turkish official framing	What the documents support
Pre-war context	Hamidian massacres and reform failures show persistent vulnerability	Revolutionary committees used terror to provoke foreign intervention	Both violence by committees and large-scale massacres of Armenians in 1894–1896 are documented
Wartime conduct	Self-defense and mobilization under persecution	Rebellion and collaboration with Russian forces	Armed Armenian activity and Armenian volunteer units existed; its scale and motive are disputed
27 May 1915 law	Legal cover for destruction and expropriation	Temporary security relocation	The law text is authentic and public; its application across provinces is the point of dispute
Deaths	1–1.5 million	Around 300,000 in cited figures, plus large Muslim losses	Baseline population, emigration and war-related mortality drive the gap
Postwar tribunals	Evidence of state responsibility	Politicized under occupation	Verdicts exist; their reliability is contested
Legal label	Genocide, recognized by scholars and parliaments	Not established by a competent court; Convention not retroactive	No international court has ruled on 1915; Perinçek left the question open
Archives	Ottoman, German, US, British and Armenian sources point to intent	Ottoman archives are open; Armenian and party archives should be too	Researchers draw different conclusions from overlapping collections

The question of whether Ottoman archives are accessible to researchers is addressed in Fact Check: Are Turkish and Ottoman Archives Closed to Researchers on 1915?. Comparable overviews appear in Archive of Nations and Monitor of Nations.

What historians dispute

• Intent and central direction. Whether surviving orders prove a plan to destroy Armenians as a group, or reflect security relocations that became lethal through violence and neglect.
• The role of the Special Organization and local officials in attacks on convoys.
• The authenticity of individual documents, especially those published in 1920.
• Numbers. The 1914 Armenian population (Ottoman census figures near 1.3 million against Armenian Patriarchate estimates near 2.1 million), survivors, conversions and emigration.
• Archive coverage. Researchers on both sides argue about completeness, cataloguing and the weight to give diplomatic compared with Ottoman internal documents.

Terrorism, Politicization and the Path to Normalization

Between 1973 and the 1990s, Armenian militant groups carried out attacks on Turkish diplomats and facilities. Turkish authorities date the wave from the January 1973 killing of two Turkish consuls in Los Angeles. Its main perpetrators were ASALA (the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia, founded 1975) and JCAG-ARA (Justice Commandos of the Armenian Genocide, later the Armenian Revolutionary Army). Notable attacks included Esenboğa Airport in Ankara (August 1982) and Orly Airport in Paris (July 1983). The Turkish Foreign Ministry counts dozens of Turkish diplomats, officials and family members killed, and says that 31 of 32 JCAG-ARA attacks targeted Turkish representatives. Armenian state and community institutions generally disowned the violence, and some analysts treat ASALA as a marginal movement. Ankara argues that such networks and later political lobbying have sought to build a “Late Ottoman genocides” narrative that also incorporates Pontic and Assyrian claims.

On diplomacy, the chronology is clear. In 2005 Ankara proposed a historians’ commission. In 2009 Türkiye and Armenia signed the Zurich Protocols (10 October 2009), which were never ratified. On 14 January 2022 the two special representatives, Ambassador Serdar Kılıç and Armenian Deputy Speaker Ruben Rubinyan, met in Moscow and began direct talks on full normalization. These talks are aimed at regional peace in the South Caucasus, and their relationship with the wider region is discussed in The Political Axis.

Key Terms & Related Guides

• Takvim-i Vekayi: the Ottoman official gazette in which the 1915 law was published on 1 June 1915. See the close reading of the relocation law.
• Sevk ve İskân Kanunu: the Relocation and Resettlement Law of 27 May 1915.
• Hunchak / Dashnak: the two Armenian revolutionary parties, founded in 1887 and 1890.
• Fedayi: armed irregular fighters affiliated with the committees.
• Dolus specialis: the specific intent to destroy a group “as such”, the core element of genocide under Article II of the 1948 Convention.
• ASALA / JCAG-ARA: the militant organizations responsible for attacks on Turkish diplomats, 1973 to the 1990s.
• Joint Historical Commission: Türkiye’s 2005 proposal for an expert panel with full archival access.
• Adil hafıza (fair memory): Türkiye’s term for an inclusive approach to remembering all communities’ losses.

Related guides:

• The Treaty Vault: Reading Lausanne, Kars, Montreux and the UN Charter as Primary Texts
• The 2005 Joint Historical Commission Proposal and the 2022 Normalization Talks
• Editorial Principles and Politi Archive FAQ
• About Politi Archive

Political-diplomatic angles are also covered by Bloc Politics and Regional Order.

Perspective Note

Politi Archive presents analysis from a Türkiye-aligned perspective, grounded in Türkiye's official doctrines and international law arguments, and clearly distinguishes documented fact from interpretation. Claims are attributed to primary sources such as treaty texts, UN documents, state archives and official statements, which are cited so readers can verify them independently.

Politi Archive Editorial Team