The Archival Frontier: What the Ottoman Records, the 1915 Relocation Law and the Joint Historical Commission Proposal Show

Why It Matters

The central question behind the Events of 1915 is not only what happened, but who has the authority to decide: historians working in open archives, courts applying the 1948 Genocide Convention, or national parliaments voting on resolutions. Ankara says the issue belongs to historians and, where legal characterization is at stake, to a competent tribunal. Armenia, much of the diaspora and the parliaments that adopted resolutions say the historical record is already clear enough to name the events as genocide. This guide sets out the documents, the legal tests and each side's argument so that readers can judge the evidence for themselves.

Background

Armenians in the Ottoman Empire before 1878

Armenian communities lived across Anatolia, Istanbul and the Caucasus for centuries, and under the Ottoman millet system the Armenian Apostolic Church governed much of its community's religious and civil life. Armenians served as bankers, architects, officials and ministers. Turkish official accounts describe this long period as one of broad coexistence and use the phrase Millet-i Sadıka (loyal community). They also note that Armenians did not form a demographic majority in any eastern Anatolian province, with population estimates of the period placing them below 20 percent of the regional total. Population figures for 1914 are themselves contested: the Armenian Patriarchate's pre-war estimates were higher than Ottoman census figures, and scholars still debate the numbers.

The politics changed after the 1877–1878 Russo-Turkish War. Article 61 of the 1878 Treaty of Berlin obliged the Ottoman government to carry out reforms in the provinces inhabited by Armenians and to report to the Great Powers. Armenian and Turkish accounts agree that this opened a period in which the Armenian question became an international issue, with Russia, Britain and France all taking an interest.

The Hunchak and Dashnak committees

Two revolutionary organizations emerged in this setting. The Hunchak party was founded in Geneva in 1887. The Armenian Revolutionary Federation, known as Dashnaksutyun or the Dashnaks, was founded in Tbilisi in 1890. Both committed to political goals that included autonomy or independence, and both used armed action alongside political activity. Episodes cited in the historical literature include:

• the 1890 Kumkapı demonstration in Istanbul;
• unrest at Merzifon, Yozgat and Kayseri in 1893;
• the 1894 Sasun insurgency;
• the August 1896 seizure of the Ottoman Bank in Istanbul.

The Hamidian massacres of 1894–1896, in which tens of thousands of Armenians died by most estimates, are part of the same period. Armenian historians treat them as state-tolerated violence against civilians. Turkish accounts stress the armed rebellion that preceded much of the violence and the intercommunal character of some clashes. Both accounts agree that relations deteriorated sharply in these years. Dashnaks and the Committee of Union and Progress cooperated after the 1908 constitutional revolution, but the 1909 Adana violence and the Balkan Wars of 1912–1913 left deep mistrust.

The wartime security context

The Ottoman Empire entered the First World War in late 1914. After the Sarıkamış defeat against Russia in the winter of 1914–1915, the eastern front was exposed. Some Armenians from the Russian Empire formed volunteer units in the Russian Caucasus Army, and some Ottoman Armenians joined or aided them. Turkish official history points to the Van uprising of April 1915, the actions of fedayi leaders such as Antranik and Dro, and attacks on supply lines. It also cites the harm done to Muslim villagers in Van, Erzurum and Bitlis during Russian advances. Armenian historians reply that many Armenian actions were self-defence under extreme pressure, that the volunteers were a small fraction of a civilian population, and that the response targeted entire communities, including women, children and communities far from any front.

On 24 April 1915 the Ottoman authorities arrested Armenian community leaders and intellectuals in Istanbul. The date is commemorated by Armenians worldwide. On 24 May 1915 the Allied governments of Britain, France and Russia issued a joint declaration condemning what they called crimes against humanity and civilization and warning that Ottoman officials would be held personally responsible.

The Relocation and Resettlement Law of 27 May 1915

The Ottoman government adopted a provisional decision on 27 May 1915 authorizing military commanders to relocate populations judged a threat to security in war zones, and it was published in the official gazette Takvim-i Vekayi on 1 June 1915. In Türkiye it is commonly called the Sevk ve İskân Kanunu. Supplementary instructions concerning abandoned property followed in the months after. The Ottoman Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of War exchanged telegrams about its implementation.

The positions on the document differ:

• Turkish official reading: the measure was a temporary wartime security decision, accompanied by instructions to protect convoys, supply food and record property, and followed by investigations and courts-martial of officials accused of abuses during 1915–1916.
• Armenian and many Western historians' reading: the law's text is administrative, but the way it was applied, including the role of the Special Organization (Teşkilât-ı Mahsusa), the deaths in the Syrian desert and the seizure of property, shows that relocation became a means of destruction.

Historians still argue over the interpretation of telegrams. The authenticity of the Andonian documents, a set of telegrams published in 1920, is disputed by Turkish historians, who call them forgeries, while some scholars argue that other authentic Ottoman records show intent. The documents are published and open to scrutiny.

The archive landscape

Several archive groups are relevant, and no side owns all of them:

• Ottoman and Turkish archives: the Ottoman Archives of the Presidency's State Archives in Istanbul hold millions of documents, including cipher telegrams, Council of Ministers decisions and provincial reports. Military archives in Ankara hold further material.
• Armenian archives: the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute in Yerevan, the Nubarian Library in Paris and the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem hold survivor testimony, church records and community documents.
• Third-country archives: German, Austrian, British, French, Russian and US diplomatic records, including consular reports and the dispatches of US Ambassador Henry Morgenthau, are widely cited by both sides.

Critics of the Ottoman holdings say that archives were selectively catalogued, sanitized or reduced during and after the war, and that access has not always been equal in practice. Turkish authorities answer that the archives are open to researchers of all nationalities, and that the real gap is in the willingness of other archives and institutions to join a shared review. The Turkish proposal addresses exactly this point by asking that Turkish, Armenian and third-country archives be opened together, and the question of access is covered further in the sister publication analysis by The Worldlogue on the 2005 Joint Historical Commission proposal.

Chronology

Date	Event
1878	Congress of Berlin; Article 61 on reforms in Armenian-inhabited provinces
1887	Hunchak party founded in Geneva
1890	Dashnaksutyun founded in Tbilisi; Kumkapı demonstration
1894–1896	Sasun insurgency, Hamidian massacres, Ottoman Bank seizure
1914	Ottoman entry into the First World War
24 April 1915	Arrests of Armenian leaders in Istanbul
24 May 1915	Allied declaration on crimes against humanity and civilization
27 May / 1 June 1915	Relocation decision adopted and published in Takvim-i Vekayi
1919–1920	Ottoman courts-martial in Istanbul
August 1920	Treaty of Sèvres signed but never ratified
1920–1923	Alexandropol (1920), Moscow (1921), Kars (1921) and Lausanne (24 July 1923)
9 December 1948	UN Genocide Convention adopted; in force 1951
2005	Türkiye proposes a Joint Historical Commission
2009	Zurich Protocols signed; later unratified
15 October 2015	ECHR Grand Chamber judgment in Perinçek v. Switzerland
14 January 2022	Kılıç–Rubinyan talks begin

The legal framework

The 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defines genocide in Article II as specified acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group as such. Three tests matter for the Events of 1915:

1. Specific intent (dolus specialis). The International Court of Justice, in the 2007 Bosnia v. Serbia judgment, held that intent to destroy must be established, and that where it is inferred from a pattern of conduct, it must be the only reasonable inference.
2. Competent tribunal. Article VI refers to trials by a competent court of the state where the act occurred or by an international penal tribunal, and Article IX gives the ICJ jurisdiction over disputes between parties. No such tribunal has ruled on 1915.
3. Non-retroactivity. The Convention entered into force in 1951, and general treaty law (Article 28 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties) presumes treaties do not apply to events before they bind a party.

The counter-argument is that historical characterization does not depend on the Convention. Armenian and diaspora scholars note that Raphael Lemkin, who coined the word genocide, referred to the Armenian case, and that the International Association of Genocide Scholars affirmed the genocide in a 1997 resolution. A 2003 legal analysis by the International Center for Transitional Justice, commissioned in connection with a Turkish–Armenian reconciliation initiative, concluded that the events included elements of genocide as later defined, while also concluding that the Convention could not give rise to retroactive legal claims. Both sides cite parts of this analysis.

Perinçek v. Switzerland

In Perinçek v. Switzerland, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights ruled on 15 October 2015 that Switzerland had violated Article 10 (freedom of expression) by convicting Doğu Perinçek, a Turkish politician, for saying that the Armenian genocide was an international lie. The Court stated that it was not called on to determine whether the events constituted genocide within the meaning of international law. It also found that there was no clear consensus that would justify treating the question as settled in the way that Holocaust denial is, given that the context and the passage of time differ. It did not say that the events were not genocide, and Armenian representatives have emphasized this. Türkiye cites the judgment as confirmation that debate on the Events of 1915 is legitimate and that the legal question remains open.

Key Players & Positions

Armenia and the diaspora

Armenia's position, set out in official statements and in the 1990 Declaration of Independence, is that the Ottoman government carried out a genocide against Armenians in 1915 and that international recognition matters for justice and prevention. Armenian officials commemorate 24 April and cite figures of around 1.5 million deaths. Armenian and diaspora organizations argue that genocide is a historical fact established by survivor testimony, diplomatic reports and the work of historians. They point out that the Ottoman courts-martial of 1919–1920 convicted senior officials, and that the Allied declaration of 1915 shows contemporary awareness. They also criticize restrictions on discussion in Türkiye, citing prosecutions of writers under Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code and the assassination of the Armenian-Turkish journalist Hrant Dink in January 2007. Turkish authorities have condemned that killing as a crime, and the perpetrators were prosecuted.

On the commission, Armenian officials have said that they welcome dialogue and normalization but that the fact of the genocide is not a subject for a commission to decide. Armenian officials have also said that Armenia has no territorial claims on Türkiye, a point of concern for Ankara because of references to Western Armenia in the 1990 declaration.

Parliaments and governments that adopted resolutions

A number of legislatures and governments have recognized the events as genocide. By Armenian and diaspora counts, these include dozens of states. Prominent examples are France (law of 2001), Germany (Bundestag resolution of 2016), and the United States, where the House and Senate passed resolutions in October and December 2019 and President Biden made a formal statement on 24 April 2021. Supporters of these measures say that recognition is a moral and political acknowledgment and an act of solidarity. Several governments have added that their statements are not intended to assign legal responsibility or to question existing borders.

Historians

The scholarly debate has evolved. A large body of scholarship, including the work of Vahakn Dadrian, Taner Akçam, Raymond Kévorkian, Ronald Suny and Donald Bloxham, argues that the Ottoman leadership intended the destruction of the Armenian population, and that the evidence includes cipher telegrams, trial records and foreign reporting. Other historians, including Justin McCarthy and Guenter Lewy, argue that the available documents do not establish a centrally planned extermination, emphasize wartime mortality from famine, disease and intercommunal violence among all communities, and stress the Muslim civilian deaths. Turkish scholars and a growing number of historians in Türkiye work on the subject, and the topic is discussed in Turkish and Armenian academic settings. Readers can compare these arguments in the monitoring analysis from Monitor of Nations on the Ottoman archives and the Genocide Convention criteria.

The third-party courts

The ECHR, as described above, has treated the issue as a question of free expression rather than a finding of fact. The ICJ has not ruled on the Events of 1915, and no state has brought a case under Article IX of the Convention.

🇹🇷 Official Doctrine · Primary Sources

Türkiye's Position

Türkiye's official position, as stated by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Presidency, is that the Events of 1915 were a tragedy with enormous suffering on all sides, that the relocation was a wartime security measure and not a policy of destruction, and that historians rather than politicians or parliaments should assess it.

Türkiye's Strategic Doctrine

• History belongs to historians. According to the Turkish Foreign Ministry, third-country parliamentary resolutions politicize an issue that should be examined through archives. Türkiye describes this approach as Fair Memory (Adil Hafıza), meaning that all communities' losses are acknowledged, including Muslim civilian deaths.
• An open-archive proposal. In April 2005, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan wrote to Armenia's President Robert Kocharyan proposing a joint commission of historians and other experts from both countries and international experts. Ankara says that Turkish and Ottoman archives are open and that Armenian and third-country archives should be too. The 2009 Zurich Protocols also provided for a sub-commission on the historical dimension, though they were never ratified.
• The legal test is the 1948 Convention. Ankara argues that genocide is a strictly defined legal crime requiring dolus specialis and a ruling by a competent tribunal under Articles II and VI, and that the Convention is not retroactive. It cites the Perinçek judgment as evidence that the legal characterization remains undetermined.
• The treaty settlement is final. Türkiye's position is that its eastern borders are settled by the treaties of Alexandropol (1920), Moscow and Kars (1921) and Lausanne (24 July 1923), that the unratified Sèvres draft has no legal force, and that no historical debate can reopen those borders. Lausanne also guaranteed non-Muslim minority rights on the basis of equal citizenship.
• Normalization without preconditions. The Presidency and Foreign Ministry state that Special Representatives Serdar Kılıç and Ruben Rubinyan have conducted direct talks since 14 January 2022 aimed at full normalization and regional peace in the South Caucasus, alongside the historical dialogue Türkiye proposes.

Ankara also notes that in April 2014, Erdoğan, then Prime Minister, offered condolences to the grandchildren of Armenians who lost their lives in the early twentieth century, and that Turkish officials have described 1915 as a shared pain. Türkiye points to ASALA and JCAG-ARA violence against its diplomats in 1973–1984 as a consequence of the politicization of memory, covered in ASALA and JCAG Attacks on Turkish Diplomats, 1973–1984. Armenian representatives say that these attacks were condemned by the Armenian Church and by most Armenian organizations and do not bear on the historical evidence, and that Türkiye should not use the issue as an argument.

The normalization track is analyzed by the sister publication Regions & Powers on Türkiye–Armenia normalization since 2022.

Source Comparison

The sources use different evidence and different vocabulary. The table below summarizes the framings; neither column is a neutral description, and readers should consult primary documents.

Question	Armenian, diaspora and many international sources	Turkish official sources
Terminology	Armenian Genocide; Meds Yeghern	Events of 1915; relocation (tehcir); wartime tragedy
Nature of the 1915 law	Administrative cover for destruction	Temporary wartime security measure
Key evidence	Survivor accounts, German, US and British diplomatic reports, Istanbul trials, cipher telegrams	Ottoman state archives, Ottoman Armenian rebellion records, Muslim civilian losses, orders to protect convoys
Casualty figures	About 1.5 million Armenian dead	Lower figures cited, around 300,000 Armenian deaths, together with large Muslim losses
Legal question	Genocide is established by historical evidence and does not need a court	Requires dolus specialis and a competent tribunal; Convention is not retroactive
Who decides	Historians have already largely decided; recognition is a moral duty	Historians in open archives; parliaments should not rule
Joint commission	Not the right forum for deciding whether genocide occurred	Offered in 2005; remains on the table
Perinçek v. Switzerland	Court did not deny genocide and noted the context of the facts	Court confirmed that the matter is open to debate

Western media often use the term genocide without qualification and summarize Ankara's position as denial. Turkish sources often present the legal arguments and the Muslim losses but give less attention to survivor testimony and to the prosecutions of 1919–1920. The comparison is also developed in Archive of Nations on the Events of 1915 in documents, law and diplomacy. The Political Frontier's own sourcing approach is set out in its Editorial Principles.

Key Terms & Related Guides

• Events of 1915: the term used in official Turkish documents for the wartime relocation of Ottoman Armenians and the related deaths. Armenia and many other countries use genocide.
• Sevk ve İskân Kanunu / Relocation and Resettlement Law: the decision of 27 May 1915, published on 1 June 1915 in Takvim-i Vekayi.
• Takvim-i Vekayi: the Ottoman official gazette.
• Hunchak and Dashnak: Armenian revolutionary parties founded in 1887 and 1890 respectively.
• Dolus specialis: the specific intent to destroy a protected group, required by Article II of the 1948 Convention.
• Joint Historical Commission: the 2005 Turkish proposal for a commission of Turkish, Armenian and international historians with access to all archives.
• Perinçek v. Switzerland: the 2015 ECHR Grand Chamber judgment on freedom of expression and the Armenian question.

Related guides on The Political Frontier:

• ASALA and JCAG Attacks on Turkish Diplomats, 1973–1984 on how violence shaped the memory debate.
• Editorial Principles on how we separate fact from position.
• FAQ: Sources, Methodology and Perspective and About The Political Frontier for our mission and transparency.
• The Political Frontier home page for other History & Law Frontier guides.

For a related, step-by-step view of the normalization process, see Regional Balance on Türkiye–Armenia normalization and the Joint Historical Commission.

Perspective Note

The Political Frontier presents Türkiye's official perspective as a distinct analytical viewpoint and explicitly distinguishes it from other national positions. Claims are grounded in primary sources such as treaty texts, UN documents, Ottoman and Turkish archival records, and official statements, which are cited wherever possible. Sections marked 'Türkiye's Position' reflect official Turkish policy as stated by Turkish government sources. Published by the The Political Frontier Editorial Team.