Two Peoples, One Land
Epochs · Epoch 3 of 9

Awakening & Atrocity

1905–1917

The Hamidian massacres, the 1905 Caucasian violence, and the Armenian Genocide of 1915.

The collapse of imperial multi-ethnic order. The Hamidian massacres of 1894-96 in the Ottoman Empire foreshadowed; the 1905 Caucasian Armenian-Tatar violence in the Russian Empire opened; the 1915 Armenian Genocide of the Anatolian heartland and the parallel Sayfo against Assyrians constituted the central catastrophe of the modern Armenian experience. The Russian Empire collapsed in 1917; the Ottoman Empire effectively followed in 1918.

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Chronology
1910190519171895 · Suppression of the Catholicosate of Aghtamar1905 · Baku massacres of 1905 (atrocity)1905 · Shusha pogrom (1905) (atrocity)1909 · Adana massacre (atrocity)1914 · Sayfo, genocide of Assyrian Christians (atrocity)1914 · Ottoman entry into the First World War1914 · Salmas, Khoy and Urmia massacres of Christians in Persian Azerbaijan (atrocity)1914 · Sarıkamış catastrophe1915 · Armed resistance at Sasun1915 · Armenian self-defence at Van1915 · Armenian Genocide (atrocity)1915 · Constantinople deportation of Armenian intellectuals (atrocity)1915 · Deportation of Armenians from Erzurum vilayet (atrocity)1915 · Promulgation of the Tehcir Law1915 · Diyarbakir vilayet massacres (atrocity)1915 · Bitlis and Muş massacres (atrocity)1915 · Deportation and drownings, Trabzon vilayet (atrocity)1915 · Deportation and killings, Mamuretulaziz/Kharberd vilayet (atrocity)1915 · Deportation of Armenians from Sivas vilayet (atrocity)1915 · Armenian armed resistance at Musa Dagh1915 · Aleppo-Deir ez-Zor death marches and camps (atrocity)1915 · Temporary Law on Abandoned Properties (Liquidation Law)1919 · Ottoman courts-martial of CUP leaders1921 · Assassination of Said Halim Pasha (Rome)1922 · Assassination of Behaeddin Shakir and Cemal Azmi (Berlin)1922 · Assassination of Djemal Pasha (Tiflis)
atrocity event

Hamidian and Adana

The Ottoman context of this period is constituent. Sultan Abdul Hamid II's Hamidian massacres (1894-96), with Sasun, the Urfa cathedral burning, the Erzurum and Trabzon killings, were the dress rehearsal of state-organised violence against the Anatolian Armenian population. The Adana massacre of April 1909, in the early constitutional period after the Young Turk Revolution, killed approximately 20,000-30,000 Armenians and signaled that the constitutional moment would not protect Christian minorities.

The 1905 Caucasian violence

In Russian-imperial territory, the 1905 Baku massacres (February 1905) and the parallel Shusha violence of August 1905 were the first major Armenian-Azerbaijani communal episode. Estimates range from 3,000 to 10,000 killed across both communities; the Russian Imperial state's capacity to keep order in the Caucasus was visibly exhausted. The pattern of mutual fear, with violence escalating once it began, was set.

The Genocide

The Armenian Genocide of 1915-18 is the central event of the period and of modern Armenian history. The Tehcir Law of 27 May 1915 authorised the deportation; the 24 April 1915 arrest of the Armenian leadership in Constantinople is the conventional date marker. The vilayet-by-vilayet record is documented in this atlas: Erzurum, Bitlis-Muş, Trabzon, Sivas, Mamuretulaziz/Kharberd, Diyarbakir and the Aleppo-Deir ez-Zor desert killings. Estimates of Armenian dead range from 800,000 (lower-bound revisionist) to 1.5 million (mainstream genocide-studies consensus). The parallel Sayfo killed 250,000-500,000 Assyrians.

The Armenian self-defence at Van (April-May 1915) and the Sasun resistance (April-August 1915) and the 53-day Musa Dagh resistance are the recorded armed responses. The October 1918 Mudros Armistice ended Ottoman participation in WWI; the Allied Constantinople tribunals of 1919-20 prosecuted CUP figures for the deportations and massacres but were superseded by the post-Sèvres political settlement.

Persia's parallel record

The Ottoman incursion into northwestern Persia in 1914-15 carried the same violence into Salmas, Khoy and Urmia. The Persian Christian (Armenian, Assyrian, Chaldean) communities of those plains were hit in the same period as the Anatolian deportations.

Russian collapse

The Russian Empire collapsed in February-October 1917. Russian troops withdrew from the Caucasus front through 1917-18, opening the way for the Ottoman advance of spring 1918 that would, in the next epoch, be halted at Sardarapat and Karakilisa. The political vacuum produced the brief Transcaucasian Federation (April-May 1918) and then the three independent republics, treated in Epoch IV.

What the period set

The Genocide is the foundational fact of modern Armenian political identity, including diaspora identity, including the recurring question of recognition. The atlas treats recognition as a settled scholarly and political matter (33 states; the European Parliament; the IAGS) and treats territorial revisionism on the back of recognition as a separate, more debatable question. Pages on the recognition dispute and the [[#reclaim-western-armenia|territorial-claim rebuttal]] handle these separately.

Events of the period

Grouped into year-bands so the period reads as a sequence rather than a wall.

1905–1906 2 events
1905
Baku massacres of 1905
Four days of Armenian-Tatar violence in oil-boom Baku, 6–9 February 1905, during the first Russian Revolution. Roughly 1,500–2,000 people were killed. The violence exposed the fragility of imperial policing, fused class rivalry with communal fear, and became the first major urban atrocity in the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict record.
massacre casualties 1,500–2,000
1905
Shusha pogrom (1905)
August 1905 Armenian-Tatar violence in Shusha, then the cultural centre of Karabakh. Attacks on the Armenian quarter, Armenian armed counter-action, and the burning of homes hardened the city into segregated communal zones. The episode became an early template for later Karabakh memory wars.
pogrom casualties 200–500
1909–1910 1 event
1909
Adana massacre
Two waves of anti-Armenian violence in Adana and Cilicia, 13–27 April 1909, during the Ottoman counter-revolution. Approximately 20,000–30,000 Armenians were killed. The event exposed the fragility of the Young Turk constitutional settlement and bridged the Hamidian repertoire of massacre with the CUP-era destruction of 1915.
massacre critical casualties 20,000–30,000
1913–1914 4 events
1914–1918
Sayfo, genocide of Assyrian Christians
Genocide of Assyrian and Syriac Christian communities during the First World War, overlapping with the Armenian Genocide. Ottoman forces and allied irregulars killed an estimated 250,000–300,000 people across Hakkari, Tur Abdin and northwestern Iran.
massacre critical casualties 250,000–300,000
1914
Ottoman entry into the First World War
Ottoman entry into the First World War after the Black Sea raid of 29 October 1914. The decision aligned the CUP with Germany, opened the Caucasus front, and created the military-security frame used to justify anti-Armenian measures in 1915.
declaration critical
1914–1915
Salmas, Khoy and Urmia massacres of Christians in Persian Azerbaijan
Christian communities (Armenian, Assyrian, Chaldean) of [[place:salmas|Salmas]], [[place:khoy|Khoy]] and [[place:urmia|Urmia]] in [[place:iran|Persian Azerbaijan]] were attacked by Ottoman irregulars and allied Kurdish forces during the 1914-15 Ottoman incursion into northwestern Persia. The atrocities accompanied the Sarikamish offensive and overlapped with the parallel anti-Armenian campaign across the border in [[place:van|Van]] vilayet. Often grouped historiographically with the [[event:sayfo-1914-18|Sayfo]] (Assyrian Genocide).
massacre casualties 25,000–50,000
1914–1915
Sarıkamış catastrophe
Catastrophic Ottoman winter offensive at Sarıkamış, December 1914 – January 1915. Enver Pasha’s army lost tens of thousands to combat, exposure and disease. The defeat was blamed on Armenians and became a key pretext for disarmament and deportation.
battle critical casualties 60,000–90,000
1915–1916 14 events
1915
Armed resistance at Sasun
The mountain villages of Sasun, with a tradition of armed resistance going back to the 1894 [[event:sasun-massacre-1894|Hamidian massacres]], held out for four months against Ottoman regular and irregular forces in 1915. By mid-August the resistance was crushed; survivors were either killed in place or driven into Russian lines.
battle casualties 8,000–15,000
1915
Armenian self-defence at Van
Armenian self-defence in Van, 20 April – 19 May 1915, against Ottoman forces and irregulars during the opening phase of the genocide. The resistance protected the Armenian quarter until Russian-Armenian forces arrived, then became a central contradiction in the genocide debate: real armed defence, later used by denialists to rationalise deportation everywhere.
battle
1915–1923
Armenian Genocide
Systematic destruction of the Ottoman Armenian population by the Young Turk government, 1915–1923. Approximately 1–1.5 million Armenians were killed through massacre, deportation into the Syrian desert, engineered starvation, disease, and forced conversion. The paradigmatic twentieth-century case for the legal concept of genocide; recognised as such by most genocide scholars, more than thirty states, and the [[ruling:genocide-convention|UN Genocide Convention]] drafters who explicitly had it in mind. Officially denied by the Republic of Turkey.
massacre critical casualties 1,000,000–1,500,000 displaced 500,000–1,000,000
1915
Constantinople deportation of Armenian intellectuals
Coordinated arrest of Armenian intellectuals, clergy, professionals and political organisers in Constantinople on 24/25 April 1915. Several hundred were deported inland and most were killed. The operation decapitated Ottoman Armenian civil society and became the commemorative opening date of the Armenian Genocide.
deportation critical casualties 235–270
1915
Deportation of Armenians from Erzurum vilayet
Systematic deportation of the Armenian population of Erzurum vilayet under the Tehcir Law. The Erzurum-Erzincan road carried the principal deportation columns of northeastern Anatolia toward the Syrian Desert. The pre-war Armenian population of the vilayet (~215,000 by Patriarchate enumeration) was effectively erased; survival rates on the marches were below 15%.
deportation critical casualties 200,000–250,000 displaced 215,000–260,000
1915
Promulgation of the Tehcir Law
Temporary Law of Deportation issued on 27 May 1915, giving retroactive legal cover to Armenian deportations already under way. It authorised military authorities to relocate populations deemed security threats and became the formal administrative instrument of genocide.
declaration critical
1915
Diyarbakir vilayet massacres
Diyarbakir, under the governorate of [[figure:resid-bey|Mehmed Reşid]], saw some of the most systematic killings of Armenians and Assyrians in 1915. Reşid is one of the small set of provincial governors whose direct culpability is best documented. Armenian and Assyrian communities of [[place:diyarbakir|Tigranakert/Diyarbakir]] were both effectively erased.
massacre critical casualties 120,000–160,000
1915
Bitlis and Muş massacres
Mass killings of Armenians in Bitlis vilayet (Bitlis, Muş, Sasun, Genç) by Ottoman forces and Kurdish irregulars in summer 1915. The Muş plain Armenian population was massacred in place rather than deported; the [[heritage:surb-karapet-mush|Surb Karapet Monastery of Muş]] was destroyed; the Sasun mountain villages staged a doomed armed resistance.
massacre critical casualties 100,000–180,000
1915
Deportation and drownings, Trabzon vilayet
Armenians of the Pontic vilayet of Trabzon were deported on 26 June 1915. A documented portion of the deportees, including women and children, were taken aboard barges and drowned in the Black Sea; this is one of the better-attested non-march execution methods of the genocide. Italian consul Giacomo Gorrini's August 1915 report is foundational primary documentation.
deportation critical casualties 50,000–80,000 displaced 50,000–80,000
1915
Deportation and killings, Mamuretulaziz/Kharberd vilayet
Mamuretulaziz vilayet (capital Kharberd / modern Elazığ) was emptied between July and September 1915. American consul [[figure:leslie-davis|Leslie Davis]] documented the operation extensively, including the "Slaughterhouse Province" report on the Lake Goeljuk killings of summer 1915. The killing of Armenian men in batches near Lake Goeljuk is the best-documented site-specific massacre of the central genocide.
deportation critical casualties 100,000–140,000
1915
Deportation of Armenians from Sivas vilayet
Sivas vilayet, with a pre-war Armenian population of approximately 165,000-205,000 (Patriarchate / Karpat), was emptied in successive deportation columns July-September 1915. Mortality on the Sivas-Malatya-Aleppo route was extreme; surviving columns reached Ras al-Ayn and Deir ez-Zor by late autumn, where most were killed in 1916.
deportation critical casualties 130,000–170,000 displaced 165,000–205,000
1915
Armenian armed resistance at Musa Dagh
Fifty-three-day Armenian self-defence on Musa Dagh in Cilicia, July – September 1915. Several thousand Armenians from nearby villages resisted deportation, withdrew to the mountain, and were rescued by French warships. The episode became a global symbol of armed survival through Franz Werfel’s novel and later Armenian memory.
battle
1915–1916
Aleppo-Deir ez-Zor death marches and camps
The terminus of the principal 1915-16 deportation routes was the Syrian Desert, particularly the camps at [[place:ras-al-ayn|Ras al-Ayn]] and the killing fields beyond [[place:deir-ez-zor|Deir ez-Zor]]. Most surviving deportees from Sivas, Erzurum, Bitlis and Mamuretulaziz reached these zones by autumn 1915 and were killed there in the spring and summer of 1916 under [[figure:salih-zeki|Salih Zeki]]'s administration.
massacre critical casualties 200,000–400,000
1915
Temporary Law on Abandoned Properties (Liquidation Law)
Ottoman Temporary Law on Abandoned Properties of 26 September 1915. It legalised the seizure and liquidation of Armenian property left after deportation, funding deportation machinery and redistributing wealth to state-aligned Muslim institutions and individuals.
declaration critical

Further reading

  1. Thomas de Waal, Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan Through Peace and War, 2003
  2. Tadeusz Swietochowski, Russian Azerbaijan, 1905–1920: The Shaping of a National Identity in a Muslim Community, 1985
  3. Audrey L. Altstadt, The Azerbaijani Turks: Power and Identity Under Russian Rule, 1992
  4. Tadeusz Swietochowski, Russia and Azerbaijan: A Borderland in Transition, 1995
  5. Caucasus Viceroyalty statistical office, Кавказский календарь на 1906 год (Caucasian Calendar 1906), 1906
  6. Illarion Ivanovich Vorontsov-Dashkov, Correspondence and reports of Caucasus Viceroy Illarion Vorontsov-Dashkov, 1905–1915, 1905
  7. ARF / Hnchak / period Armenian press, Armenian Revolutionary Federation contemporaneous press, 1905–1906, 1905
  8. Ahmed bey Aghayev (Ağaoğlu) and the Difai founding committee, Difai founding program (Ganja, 1906), 1906
  9. Ronald Grigor Suny, They Can Live in the Desert But Nowhere Else: A History of the Armenian Genocide, 2015
  10. Vahakn N. Dadrian, The History of the Armenian Genocide: Ethnic Conflict from the Balkans to Anatolia to the Caucasus, 1995
  11. Raymond Kévorkian, The Armenian Genocide: A Complete History, 2011
  12. Donald Bloxham, The Great Game of Genocide: Imperialism, Nationalism, and the Destruction of the Ottoman Armenians, 2005
  13. Taner Akçam, A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility, 2006
  14. The New York Times (compiled), Various dispatches on the deportations and massacres of Armenians, 1915–1916, 1915
  15. Henry Morgenthau Sr., Ambassador Morgenthau's Story, 1918
  16. Taner Akçam, The Young Turks' Crime Against Humanity: The Armenian Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire, 2012
  17. Michael A. Reynolds, Shattering Empires: The Clash and Collapse of the Ottoman and Russian Empires, 1908–1918, 2011
  18. Fatma Müge Göçek, Denial of Violence: Ottoman Past, Turkish Present, and Collective Violence Against the Armenians, 1789–2009, 2014
  19. United Nations General Assembly, Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, 1948
  20. White House, Statement by President Joe Biden on Armenian Remembrance Day, 2021
  21. Christopher J. Walker, Armenia: The Survival of a Nation, 1980
  22. David Gaunt, Massacres, Resistance, Protectors: Muslim-Christian Relations in Eastern Anatolia during World War I, 2006
  23. Vahakn N. Dadrian & Taner Akçam, Judgment at Istanbul: The Armenian Genocide Trials, 2011
  24. Eric Bogosian, Operation Nemesis: The Assassination Plot that Avenged the Armenian Genocide, 2015
  25. James Bryce, Arnold J. Toynbee (compilers), The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire 1915-16: Documents Presented to Viscount Grey of Fallodon, 1916
  26. Richard G. Hovannisian (ed.), Armenian Karin/Erzerum, 2003
  27. Wolfgang Gust (ed.), The Armenian Genocide: Evidence from the German Foreign Office Archives, 1915-1916, 2014
  28. Richard G. Hovannisian (ed.), Armenian Baghesh/Bitlis and Taron/Mush, 2001
  29. Hayk D. Davtyan; Jean-Pierre Mahé, The Holy Cross of Akhtamar: A Tenth-Century Armenian Church, 2010
  30. Rouben Paul Adalian, Historical Dictionary of Armenia (entries on Western Armenian provinces and cities), 2010
  31. Vrej-Armen Artinian, Iran Bekhradnia (Iranica encyclopedia entry), Iran, the Armenian community of (entry in Encyclopaedia Iranica)
  32. Eden Naby, The Forgotten Genocide: The Plight of the Christian Minorities of Persia, 1914-1918, 1977