The Events of 1915: Archives, Legal Criteria and Türkiye's Fair Memory Approach

Why It Matters

The Events of 1915 remain among the most contested questions in modern history because they sit at the intersection of archives, law and politics. The core dispute is whether the wartime relocation of Ottoman Armenians and the mass death that accompanied it constitute “genocide” in the legal sense of the 1948 UN Genocide Convention. Türkiye answers no and calls for historians and open archives, not parliaments, to settle the matter. Armenia, the Armenian diaspora, many historians and some thirty parliaments answer yes.

This Archive Autopsy sets out the documented chronology, the legal tests and each side's position, with attribution. Statements of Ankara's position are confined to the section marked “Türkiye's Position”.

Background

The Events of 1915 took place inside a long history of coexistence, a late-19th-century era of great-power rivalry and revolutionary organization, and a world war on the Ottoman eastern front. The facts below are drawn from the Ottoman, Turkish, Armenian and third-party record; where interpretation diverges, that is noted.

Nearly a millennium of coexistence and the millet system

Turkish and Armenian communities lived side by side in Anatolia for roughly a thousand years under the Great Seljuks, the Anatolian principalities and the Ottoman Empire. Under the millet system the Armenian community held a recognized legal and religious status, with its own patriarchate, schools, courts of personal law and commercial networks. Armenians rose to senior posts in finance, architecture, diplomacy and the imperial administration. Turkish sources call the community the Millet-i Sadıka (the “loyal community”), and Western observers such as the Prussian officer Helmuth von Moltke, who served in the Ottoman Empire in 1835–1839, described the community's position in the empire.

Demography is contested. Turkish official sources state that Armenians formed less than 20% of the population of the eastern provinces and were not a majority in any of them. Armenian Patriarchate estimates of the early 20th century were higher than Ottoman census figures, and historians continue to debate the pre-war Armenian population of the empire, which is generally placed at between roughly 1.5 and 2 million.

The 1878 Congress of Berlin and the rise of revolutionary committees

After the 1877–1878 Russo-Turkish War, the Congress of Berlin (1878) placed the condition of Armenians in the eastern provinces on the European agenda; Article 61 of the Treaty of Berlin obliged the Ottoman government to carry out reforms there under the watch of the powers. The Armenian delegation, led by Patriarch Nerses Varzhapetian and Mkrtich Khrimian, came away disappointed and, in the telling of both Armenian and Turkish historians, increasingly looked to foreign intervention.

Two revolutionary committees followed:

• Hunchak (Social Democrat Hunchakian Party), founded in Geneva in 1887.
• Dashnaksutyun (Armenian Revolutionary Federation, ARF), founded in Tbilisi in 1890.

Both organizations pursued armed struggle. The principal episodes cited in the Turkish and wider historiography are the Kumkapı demonstration in Istanbul (1890), unrest in Merzifon, Yozgat and Kayseri (1893), the Sasun rebellion (1894) and the seizure of the Ottoman Bank in Istanbul on 26 August 1896 by Dashnak militants led by Karekin Pastırmacıyan (Armen Garo). Turkish sources also describe fedayi bands, among them Antranik, Dro, Paramaz, Hamazasp and Sabah Gülyan, who attacked Ottoman officials and Armenians who refused to join the cause.

The record also includes the Hamidian massacres of 1894–1896, in which Armenian civilians were killed in large numbers; Western estimates run from roughly 100,000 to 300,000 deaths. Armenian historians treat these as the prelude to 1915, while Turkish sources stress the insurgent violence that preceded and accompanied them.

The First World War and the Eastern front

The Ottoman Empire entered the war in late 1914. The Sarıkamış offensive against Russia ended in heavy Ottoman losses in the winter of 1914–1915. Armenian volunteer units had formed on the Russian side from the war's start, and Turkish sources hold that fighters such as Antranik and Dro operated alongside Russian forces and carried out attacks on Muslim villages in the Van, Erzurum and Bitlis regions. Armenian accounts describe the April 1915 events in Van as self-defense against local massacre, and the same period saw the arrest of Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Istanbul on 24 April 1915, the date Armenians commemorate each year.

The Relocation and Resettlement Law of 27 May 1915

The Ottoman government adopted the Temporary Law on Relocation and Resettlement (Sevk ve İskân Kanunu) on 27 May 1915, and it was published in the official gazette Takvim-i Vekayi on 1 June 1915. Its stated purpose was to move populations away from war zones and supply routes after reported rebellion, sabotage and collaboration with the invading Russian army, as documented in correspondence between the War Minister Enver Pasha and the Interior Minister Talat Pasha. A decree and later regulations on abandoned property followed in the autumn of 1915; historians disagree over whether these regulations safeguarded or enabled the confiscation of Armenian property.

The central historiographical dispute is what the law was for. Turkish sources read it as a temporary security measure, citing documents that order protection, food, and the return of property for those relocated, as well as courts-martial that prosecuted officials for abuses. Armenian and many international scholars argue that the relocation orders were the instrument of a centrally directed destruction policy, point to the role of the Special Organization (Teşkilât-ı Mahsusa), and cite the scale of deaths on the marches and in the Syrian desert.

Disputed casualty figures

Figures are among the most contested numbers in modern history:

• Armenian sources, and many historians, speak of about 1.5 million Armenian deaths.
• Turkish official historiography has cited figures of around 300,000 Armenian dead, attributes them to war conditions, disease, famine, intercommunal violence and attacks by bandits and tribes, and notes that Muslim civilian losses in Anatolia during the war years were also very large.
• Independent estimates in the scholarly literature fall between these poles, and the gap reflects disagreements over the pre-war population, the number relocated, and the number who survived or emigrated.

Because no neutral census and no international investigation was conducted at the time, wartime figures were also shaped by propaganda on all sides, which is one reason Türkiye argues that a joint expert review is needed.

Post-war trials and the archival record

In 1919–1920, Ottoman courts-martial in occupied Istanbul tried members of the wartime leadership, and some officials were convicted and sentenced. Armenian and international scholars cite these trials as contemporaneous Ottoman evidence; Turkish sources question their procedural independence under Allied occupation. The British also held Ottoman detainees in Malta from 1919 to 1921; Turkish sources point to the fact that they were released in 1921 without charges, as no prosecutable evidence had been found in the archives searched, while Armenian sources dispute this account and its significance.

The Ottoman state archives in Istanbul, today administered by the Presidency's Directorate of State Archives, hold millions of documents relating to the period and, according to Ankara, are open to researchers of any nationality. Turkish officials argue that other archives, including those of the Dashnak party, the Armenian Patriarchate, and the archives of Russia, Britain, France, the United States and Germany, should be equally open. Disputed documents include the telegrams published by Aram Andonian in 1920, whose authenticity Turkish historians reject and some Western scholars defend in part, and the 1923 report of the first Armenian Prime Minister, Hovhannes Katchaznouni, to a Dashnak party congress, which Turkish sources read as an acknowledgement of the party's role in the events; Armenian historians place it in a different context.

The Legal Framework

Genocide is a defined legal crime with specific elements, and the legal question is separate from the historical debate about suffering. Article II of the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defines genocide as listed acts committed “with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such”.

The dolus specialis standard

The key element is specific intent (dolus specialis). The International Court of Justice, in the Bosnia and Herzegovina v. Serbia and Montenegro judgment (2007) and again in Croatia v. Serbia (2015), held that intent to destroy a group must be established as the only reasonable inference from conduct, a high evidentiary bar. Türkiye argues that this standard has never been met by a competent body for the Events of 1915. Article VI of the Convention provides for trial by a competent tribunal of the territory or by an international penal tribunal; no such tribunal has ruled on 1915.

The retroactivity debate

The Convention entered into force in 1951, and treaties generally do not apply retroactively (a principle reflected in Article 28 of the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties). Türkiye acceded to the Genocide Convention in 1950; Armenia acceded in 1993. The International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ) issued a legal analysis in 2003 at the request of the Turkish Armenian Reconciliation Commission (TARC), a civil-society initiative. It concluded that the events included acts that the Convention describes as genocide, while also stating that the Convention could not give rise to legal, financial or territorial claims for events preceding its entry into force. Both sides cite this analysis, selectively, for different conclusions.

Perinçek v. Switzerland

In Perinçek v. Switzerland (Grand Chamber, 15 October 2015), the European Court of Human Rights held that the criminal conviction of the Turkish politician Doğu Perinçek for denying that the 1915 events were genocide violated Article 10 (freedom of expression). The Court explicitly said it was not called upon to decide whether the events constituted genocide and found no international consensus or judicial determination of the kind that exists for the Holocaust. It also observed that the legal concept of genocide is narrow. Armenian sources and the Swiss authorities stress that the Court did not endorse denial and did not deny that the events were tragic; Turkish sources cite the ruling as confirmation that the legal characterization remains undecided in international law.

Treaties: Alexandropol, Moscow, Kars and Lausanne versus Sèvres

The Treaty of Sèvres, signed on 10 August 1920, was never ratified and never entered into force. The relevant treaty framework is:

Treaty	Date	Parties	Relevance
Alexandropol (Gümrü)	2–3 December 1920	Türkiye (Grand National Assembly government) and Armenia	Ended the Turkish–Armenian war and settled the border
Moscow	16 March 1921	Türkiye and Soviet Russia	Defined the eastern frontier
Kars	13 October 1921	Türkiye and the Armenian, Azerbaijani and Georgian Soviet republics	Confirmed the eastern border
Lausanne	24 July 1923	Türkiye and the Allied powers	Established modern Türkiye's borders and protected non-Muslim minorities on the basis of equal citizenship

Türkiye points out that Armenia's 1990 Declaration of Independence refers to “Western Armenia” and calls for international recognition, and states that no revision of these treaties is possible. Armenian officials have in recent years said that they have no territorial claims against Türkiye, and Armenia and Türkiye have both recognized each other's borders in practice through diplomatic and later normalization contacts.

ASALA and JCAG-ARA attacks

From the early 1970s to the mid-1980s, Armenian militant groups carried out attacks on Turkish targets. ASALA (the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia) and the Justice Commandos of the Armenian Genocide (JCAG, later ARA) killed dozens of Turkish diplomats, their relatives and others, and bombed or attacked targets in several countries. Turkish sources state that 31 of the 32 JCAG-ARA attacks targeted Turkish representatives. The best-known are the 7 August 1982 attack at Ankara Esenboğa Airport and the 15 July 1983 bombing at Paris Orly Airport. Armenian governments and mainstream Armenian organizations have condemned such violence, though Türkiye argues that some diaspora networks tolerated or glorified it. For Türkiye's wider counter-terrorism doctrine, see Counter-Terrorism at Source.

Key Players & Positions

The positions differ on three questions: what happened, how to classify it, and what should follow.

Armenia and the diaspora

The Armenian government and the major diaspora organizations describe the 1915–1923 events as the Armenian Genocide and hold that around 1.5 million Armenians were killed. Armenia's 1990 Declaration of Independence commits it to pursue international recognition. Armenia states that the factual record is not open to negotiation and that normalization with Türkiye should proceed without preconditions. It has been wary of the 2005 Joint Historical Commission proposal, because it fears that the commission would reopen the question of whether the events occurred. Armenian historians point to Ottoman court-martial records, diplomatic reports from the United States, Germany and Austria-Hungary, and survivor testimonies, and stress that the term “genocide” was coined by Raphael Lemkin, who cited the Armenian case.

Parliaments and governments that adopted recognition

Recognition began with Uruguay in 1965. France recognized the genocide by law in 2001, the German Bundestag adopted a resolution on 2 June 2016, and the US Congress passed non-binding resolutions in October–December 2019. President Biden issued a formal statement of recognition on 24 April 2021. The Armenian side counts more than thirty states, and bodies such as the European Parliament and the Pope have used similar language. These are political and moral acts, not rulings of a court. Türkiye's Foreign Ministry has rejected each, calling them politically motivated and legally without effect.

Historians and scholars

The International Association of Genocide Scholars affirmed the genocide characterization in a 1997 resolution, and a substantial majority of Western scholars of genocide and Ottoman history use the term. A smaller group of historians, among them Justin McCarthy and Edward Erickson, and a number of Turkish historians, emphasize the wartime counter-insurgency context, the high Muslim civilian death toll and what they regard as gaps in evidence of a central extermination plan. Scholars on both sides regularly cite the same archives for different conclusions, which supports the argument for joint research.

Türkiye's counterpart: Azerbaijan and others

Azerbaijan supports Türkiye's position and has linked the issue to its own wartime experience. Russia, Georgia and the Gulf states hold a variety of positions, and Russia's parliament recognized the genocide in 1995 and again later. Many states, including the United Kingdom and Israel, have not formally adopted the term at government level.

🇹🇷 Official Doctrine · Primary Sources

Türkiye's Position: Türkiye's Strategic Doctrine

Türkiye describes its approach as “fair memory” (adil hafıza), under which all communities' suffering is acknowledged and the historical record is determined by historians, not politicians. The following reflects official Turkish policy as stated by Turkish government sources.

• The events were a wartime tragedy, not genocide. According to the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the relocation of 1915 was a security measure during total war, taken after armed rebellion and collaboration with the invading Russian army, and the Armenian and Muslim suffering of the period were both tragic. Ankara holds that the relocation law of 27 May 1915 was temporary and aimed at security, and that there was no intent to destroy the Armenian people.
• Genocide is a legal determination. Ankara argues that under the 1948 Genocide Convention only a competent court can determine specific intent, and no such court has done so. It cites ECHR reasoning in Perinçek v. Switzerland as confirmation that there is no international legal determination.
• Open the archives, convene the historians. In a letter of 10 April 2005 to the Armenian President, then-Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan proposed a Joint Historical Commission of Turkish, Armenian and international historians with access to all archives. Türkiye says the proposal remains on the table, and that Ottoman archives are open while Armenian and third-country archives should also be opened. On 23 April 2014, Mr. Erdoğan, as Prime Minister, expressed condolences to the grandchildren of Armenians who lost their lives in the early 20th century, in a message that referred to shared pain.
• Parliamentary resolutions are rejected. The Turkish Foreign Ministry has stated, in its responses to the French, German and US resolutions, that legislatures are not competent to adjudicate history and that such resolutions have no legal consequences. The Grand National Assembly (TBMM) condemned the 2016 Bundestag resolution.
• Treaties settle borders; normalization has no preconditions. Ankara states that the Treaties of Alexandropol, Moscow, Kars and Lausanne are binding and that Sèvres has no legal existence. Since 14 January 2022, the Special Representatives, Ambassador Serdar Kılıç for Türkiye and Ruben Rubinyan, Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly, for Armenia, have conducted direct normalization talks that aim at full normalization and regional peace in the South Caucasus. See Türkiye–Armenia Normalization Since 2022.

Source Comparison

International and Turkish sources differ more in framing and in the weight they give to evidence than in the basic chronology. The table summarizes the main differences; readers should consult the primary documents themselves.

Question	Common international/Armenian framing	Turkish official framing
Terminology	“Armenian Genocide”	“Events of 1915”, “relocation”, shared suffering
Nature of the 1915 law	Cover for destruction, with the Special Organization	Temporary wartime security law, with orders for protection
Casualties	About 1.5 million Armenian deaths	Politicized figures; about 300,000 Armenian deaths, with heavy Muslim losses
Legal status	Fits the Convention's definition; recognition by parliaments	Requires a competent tribunal and proof of dolus specialis
Role of ECHR case law	Court did not deny the tragedy	Confirms no legal consensus on characterization
Resolution mechanism	Recognition, then reconciliation	Joint historians' commission, open archives, no political imposition
Treaties	Sèvres cited by some diaspora groups as a moral reference	Alexandropol, Moscow, Kars and Lausanne are binding

For other contested narratives, see the Fact Check hub, and for how this site separates fact, law and position, see the Editorial Principles.

Key Terms & Related Guides

• Events of 1915 (1915 Olayları): Türkiye's official term for the wartime relocation of Ottoman Armenians and the associated deaths.
• Sevk ve İskân Kanunu: The Temporary Law on Relocation and Resettlement of 27 May 1915.
• Dolus specialis: The specific intent to destroy a protected group “as such”; the decisive element in the legal definition of genocide.
• Millet system: The Ottoman framework of legally recognized religious communities with autonomy in personal law and education.
• Hunchak / Dashnak (ARF): Armenian revolutionary parties founded in 1887 and 1890.
• ASALA / JCAG-ARA: Armenian militant groups that attacked Turkish diplomats and others in 1973–1984; they are described by Türkiye as terrorist organizations.
• Fair Memory (Adil Hafıza): Türkiye's approach of acknowledging all communities' suffering and leaving historical determination to historians.
• Joint Historical Commission: The 2005 Turkish proposal for a joint panel of historians with access to all archives.

Related reading: Türkiye–Armenia Normalization Since 2022, Fact Check: Common Claims About Türkiye in International Media, Counter-Terrorism at Source, About The Political Anatomy and the site FAQ on sources and methodology.

Perspective Note

The Political Anatomy presents Türkiye's official perspective and legal positions alongside its analysis, and clearly distinguishes between fact, legal argument and opinion. Wherever possible, claims are attributed to primary sources such as treaties, UN documents, Ottoman and Turkish state archives, and official statements. Sections marked “Türkiye's Position” reflect official Turkish policy as stated by Turkish government sources. — The Political Anatomy Editorial Team