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.
- Armenian
Account
Background
By late May 1915 Armenian intellectuals had been arrested in Constantinople, Armenian soldiers had been disarmed, and deportations had already begun in eastern provinces. The Tehcir Law did not initiate the destruction; it legalised and generalised it.
The law
The law authorised military commanders to remove populations suspected of espionage, treason or obstruction of military operations. Its language was general, but its application overwhelmingly targeted Armenians. Orders from the Interior Ministry and provincial governors converted the legal permission into convoy deportations toward Syria and Mesopotamia.
Significance
The retroactive chronology matters. If deportations had been a lawful, limited security response, the law would have preceded the policy and included protections for civilians. Instead, it followed arrests and killings and operated alongside the Liquidation Law that seized Armenian property editorial.
Turkish official historiography often presents Tehcir as wartime relocation contested. The documentary record shows a state policy whose mechanisms, routes and outcomes made mass death foreseeable and intended in practice. The law gave bureaucracy to destruction editorial.