The Events of 1915: Archives, Legal Criteria and the Path to Türkiye–Armenia Normalization

Why It Matters

The Events of 1915 are the wartime relocation of Ottoman Armenians and the mass death that followed. Armenia, the diaspora and more than thirty states and parliaments call them genocide, while Türkiye rejects that label and says the question should be settled by historians, open archives and the legal tests of international law. This guide sets out the documents, the legal yardstick of the 1948 Genocide Convention, each side's position and the current Türkiye–Armenia normalization track, so readers can check each claim themselves.

Terminology note: 'Events of 1915' is Türkiye's official term and is used on this site in line with its editorial principles. Armenian sources and many scholars say 'Armenian Genocide'. Where a claim is contested, it is attributed to the party making it.

Background

Centuries of coexistence under Seljuks and Ottomans

Armenians lived under Seljuk, Anatolian beylik and Ottoman rule for roughly a millennium. In the Ottoman millet system the Armenian community had its own Patriarchate, schools, churches and commercial networks. Ottoman officials and Western observers, among them Helmuth von Moltke, who served in Ottoman lands in 1835–1839, described a community with broad religious and cultural latitude. Ankara's reading, reflected in Turkish Foreign Ministry (MFA) material, is that Armenians were long regarded as a loyal community (Millet-i Sadıka) and that they did not form a demographic majority in any eastern Anatolian province. Turkish sources put their share below 20 percent in the region as a whole. Armenian sources, including the Armenian Patriarchate's pre-war counts, give higher population figures, and the exact numbers remain disputed among historians.

Berlin 1878 and the revolutionary committees

After the 1877–1878 Russo-Turkish War, the Congress of Berlin (Article 61 of the Treaty of Berlin) placed Ottoman reforms in the Armenian-inhabited provinces under Great Power attention. Armenian political organizations then emerged:

• Hunchak (founded 1887), a socialist-nationalist committee.
• Dashnaksutyun / Dashnak (founded 1890 in Tbilisi), the Armenian Revolutionary Federation.

Both turned to armed action with the aim of provoking European intervention. The sequence includes the 1890 Kumkapı demonstration in Istanbul, unrest in Merzifon, Yozgat and Kayseri in 1893, the 1894 Sasun rebellion, and the seizure of the Ottoman Bank in Istanbul on 26 August 1896 by a Dashnak group, an operation Turkish sources associate with Karekin Pastırmacıyan. Ankara argues that the armed bands (fedayi) also killed Armenians who refused to join, as well as Ottoman officials. Armenian and many Western historians stress the other side of the same period: the Hamidian massacres of 1894–1896, in which tens of thousands of Armenians died, and the Adana violence of 1909. Both accounts are part of the record.

World War I: the Eastern Front and the relocation decision

The Ottoman Empire entered the war in late October 1914. After the heavy defeat at Sarıkamış (December 1914–January 1915), the eastern front was precarious. Armenian volunteer units, with figures such as Antranik, Dro and Hamazasp, formed alongside the Tsarist Russian army, and an insurrection began in Van in April 1915. Ankara states that these units and local committees attacked Muslim villagers, cut supply lines and cooperated with the invader in Van, Erzurum and Bitlis. Armenian historians reply that most Ottoman Armenians were loyal citizens and soldiers, that Armenian conscripts were disarmed and placed in labour battalions, and that the committees' actions cannot justify the treatment of entire communities. On 24 April 1915, Ottoman authorities arrested Armenian notables and committee figures in Istanbul. Armenians commemorate that date as the start of the genocide, and Ankara describes the arrests as a measure against committee leaders.

The Council of Ministers adopted the Relocation and Resettlement Law (Sevk ve İskân Kanunu) on 27 May 1915, and it was published in the official gazette Takvim-i Vekayi on 1 June 1915. Ankara presents it as a temporary wartime security measure to remove populations from war zones and prevent rebellion and sabotage behind the lines. It cites the correspondence between War Minister Enver Pasha and Interior Minister Talat Pasha, and later regulations on abandoned property and on protecting convoys. Critics, including Armenian institutions and a large body of genocide scholarship, argue that the relocations toward the Syrian desert were carried out in a way that caused mass death and amounted to a policy of destruction. Both sides rely on Ottoman documents, and they disagree about what the documents show.

After the war: trials, treaties and borders

Istanbul courts-martial in 1919–1920 convicted several officials, and Armenian narratives cite them as evidence. Ankara responds that they were held under occupation and political pressure. Turkish accounts also point out that the British detained Ottoman figures in Malta and released them in 1921 without charges, as Britain was unable to present sufficient evidence. Armenian sources dispute how that outcome should be read.

The settlement of borders rests on a chain of treaties:

• The unratified Treaty of Sèvres (10 August 1920) was never applied.
• The Treaty of Alexandropol (December 1920) was signed between the Grand National Assembly government and Armenia.
• The Treaty of Moscow (March 1921) and the Treaty of Kars (13 October 1921), signed with Soviet Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia, fixed the eastern border.
• The Treaty of Lausanne (24 July 1923) was the general peace settlement and guaranteed minority rights on the basis of equal citizenship.

Ankara holds that these texts are binding and leave no legal basis for revisiting the frontier. It notes that Armenia's 1990 Declaration of Independence refers to 'Western Armenia'. Armenian officials have stated that Armenia has no territorial claims against Türkiye and is ready to establish relations without preconditions.

The legal yardstick: the 1948 Genocide Convention

The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was adopted on 9 December 1948 and entered into force on 12 January 1951. Raphael Lemkin, who coined the word, drew on the Armenian case, as Armenian authors regularly note. Its key elements are:

• Article II defines genocide as specified acts committed with 'intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such'. This is the special intent known as dolus specialis.
• Article VI says persons charged are tried by a competent tribunal of the State where the act was committed or by an international penal tribunal.
• Article IX gives the International Court of Justice jurisdiction over disputes between parties.
• The International Court of Justice, in its 2007 Bosnia v. Serbia and 2015 Croatia v. Serbia judgments, set a demanding standard for proving intent and held that the Convention does not apply retroactively to acts before its entry into force.

Two further points complete the picture. In Perinçek v. Switzerland (Grand Chamber, 15 October 2015), the European Court of Human Rights held that Switzerland had violated freedom of expression by convicting a Turkish politician for denying that the events were genocide. The Court said expressly that it was not ruling on whether the events were genocide, and it treated the matter as a subject of legitimate public debate. Ankara therefore reads the judgment as confirming that this is an open question that criminal law should not close. Armenia and genocide scholars stress that the Court did not question the historical reality of the massacres and deportations, and that the International Association of Genocide Scholars affirmed the genocide characterization in 1997. A 2003 legal analysis by the International Center for Transitional Justice, prepared for the Turkish Armenian Reconciliation Commission, concluded that the Convention could not be applied retroactively but that the events included the elements of genocide as the Convention defines it. Ankara answers that this was a private opinion and not a tribunal's judgment.

Key dates

Key Players & Positions

Armenia and the diaspora

The Republic of Armenia and diaspora organizations hold that the Ottoman government carried out a planned destruction of its Armenian population, with deaths usually put at around 1–1.5 million. They commemorate 24 April each year at the Tsitsernakaberd memorial in Yerevan. They seek recognition by Türkiye, and many also seek reparations and restitution. They argue that Ottoman archives, survivor testimony, the accounts of diplomats from neutral and allied states, and the 1919–1920 trials all support their case. They also tend to oppose a historical commission whose mandate would question whether genocide occurred. The Armenian government has said, in the context of the 2009 Zurich Protocols, that it is open to normalization without preconditions.

Parliaments and governments that have adopted recognition

Uruguay was an early state to adopt recognition, in 1965. France enacted a law in 2001, the Bundestag adopted a resolution in June 2016, and both chambers of the US Congress passed resolutions in 2019. The US President's statement on 24 April 2021 used the term genocide. Russia's State Duma adopted a resolution in 1995, and the European Parliament has passed several resolutions. Pope Francis used the word in 2015. Supporters cite moral obligation, historical scholarship and the interests of victims' descendants. These measures are political and legislative acts. They are not rulings by an international court.

Historians and legal scholars

Most Western specialists on the late Ottoman period write of genocide. A minority of Turkish and foreign scholars contest the label or its legal application, citing wartime conditions, the absence of explicit extermination orders in the surviving records, and heavy Muslim civilian mortality in Anatolia from combat, famine and disease. Debate also continues about authenticity, such as the dispute over the Andonian telegrams, and about access to military and Special Organization (Teşkilat-ı Mahsusa) records. Some scholars argue that key files are missing or restricted, and Ankara replies that the Directorate of State Archives' Ottoman collections are open to researchers.

Türkiye

Türkiye's position is set out in the next section. It matters that Turkish official discourse has changed in tone over time. In April 2014, then Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan issued a message of condolences to the descendants of Armenians who lost their lives in the early twentieth century, speaking of shared pain.

Source Comparison

Readers will find that Western media often present recognition as established scholarly consensus and note Türkiye's denial. Turkish government sources emphasize the absence of a court judgment, the wartime context and the archives. Neither framing is neutral, and the gap between them is itself a fact of the debate. The site's Fact Check hub examines specific claims one by one against primary sources.

The normalization track

Türkiye closed its land border with Armenia in 1993 during the Nagorno-Karabakh war, and the two states have no diplomatic relations. The 2009 Zurich Protocols, which would have established relations and a sub-commission on the historical dimension, were signed but never ratified, and Armenia formally annulled them in 2018. Since 14 January 2022, Kılıç and Rubinyan have met directly. Ankara says the new regional realities after the Karabakh war make normalization possible and desirable. Armenian officials have said they want the border open and relations established without preconditions, while diaspora groups warn against any process that sidelines recognition. This track also fits into Türkiye's wider role as a bridge between blocs.

Key Terms & Related Guides

• Events of 1915: Türkiye's official term for the wartime relocation of Ottoman Armenians and the deaths that accompanied it.
• Sevk ve İskân Kanunu: the Relocation and Resettlement Law of 27 May 1915, published in Takvim-i Vekayi on 1 June 1915.
• Hunchak / Dashnak: Armenian political committees founded in 1887 and 1890 that used armed action in the late Ottoman period.
• Dolus specialis: the specific intent to destroy a protected group required for genocide under Article II of the 1948 Convention.
• ASALA and JCAG-ARA: Armenian militant organizations responsible for attacks on Turkish diplomats and other targets between 1973 and 1984.
• Joint Historical Commission: Türkiye's 2005 proposal for a body of historians from both countries and third countries.
• Fair Memory (Adil Hafıza): Ankara's formula for dealing with painful history through shared scholarship rather than political verdicts.

Related guides: Bloc Politics Editorial Principles, Bloc Politics FAQ on sources and methodology, About Bloc Politics, Fact Check: Common Claims About Türkiye and Is Türkiye a Bridge Between Blocs?.

Perspective Note

Bloc Politics presents Türkiye's official positions and legal arguments alongside the wider international debate, and states clearly where an analysis reflects the Turkish perspective. Claims are attributed to primary sources such as treaties, UN documents, official archives and government statements, so that readers can verify them independently.

Bloc Politics Editorial Team