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%.
| Casualties | 200k 250k |
|---|---|
| Displaced | 215k 260k |
Where atlas sources disagree, the range spans the lowest credible to the highest credible estimate. Hover the inline citations above for source-by-source figures.
Account
Order issued from Constantinople by Talat Pasha 27 May 1915 (Tehcir Law). Erzurum, a major regional centre with an Armenian population of approximately 25-30 thousand in the city plus surrounding rural villages, was emptied in three columns through July-August 1915. Eyewitness reports collected by Bryce and Toynbee include the consul Leslie Davis report from neighbouring Mamuretulaziz, the German military attaché Otto von Lossow's reports compiled in Gust, and the testimony of survivors collected by Morgenthau at the U.S. embassy in Constantinople. Standard demographic estimate (Hovannisian, Karpat triangulated) places the killed-and-died at approximately 220,000 from a pre-war community of approximately 215,000-260,000.
Further reading
- James Bryce, Arnold J. Toynbee (compilers), The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire 1915-16: Documents Presented to Viscount Grey of Fallodon, 1916
- Raymond Kévorkian, The Armenian Genocide: A Complete History, 2011
- Richard G. Hovannisian (ed.), Armenian Karin/Erzerum, 2003
- Wolfgang Gust (ed.), The Armenian Genocide: Evidence from the German Foreign Office Archives, 1915-1916, 2014