Ottoman Armenian population

Main articles: Ottoman Armenia and Demographics of the Ottoman Empire

The Ottoman Armenian population size within the Ottoman Empire between 1914 and 1915 is a controversial topic. Most estimates by Western scholars range from 1.3 to 2.0 million. Establishing the size of this population is very important in determining an accurate estimation of Armenian losses between 1915 and 1923 during the Armenian Genocide and what followed as the Turkish War of Independence.

This article presents some statistics of the Armenian population within the Ottoman Empire.

Compendious

• Geographic and Demographic maps
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  1893-96, Armenian population

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  1893-96, Armenian distribution.

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  1905, Printed in 1911 shows the boundaries before the Balkan Wars and Armenian population in the Rumelia Province, Ottoman Empire

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  1914, Armenian population.

Ottoman statistics

While the Ottoman Empire had population records prior to the 1830s, it was only in 1831 that the Office of Population Registers fund (Ceride-i Nüfus Nezareti) was founded. To draw more accurate data, the Office decentralized in 1839. Registrars, inspectors, and population officials were appointed to the provinces and smaller administrative districts. They recorded births and deaths periodically and compared lists indicating the population in each district. These records were not a total count of population. Rather, they were based on what is known as “head of household”. Only the ages, occupation, and property of the male family members only were counted.

In 1867 the Council of States took charge of drawing population tables, increasing the precision of population records. They introduced new measures of recording population counts in 1874. This led to the establishment of a General Population Administration, attached to the Ministry of Interior in 1881-1882. Somehow, these changes politicized the population counts.

Armenian population prior to 1878

In 1844 the Ottoman government recorded a total of 2.4 million Armenians within the Ottoman Empire. Abdolonyme Ubicini, a French historian and journalist, was one of the first to publish the 1844 figure by adding that he considers it an underestimation of the total Ottoman Armenian population.^[1] Ubicini states:

It is difficult to form an exact estimate of the number of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. The statement which I have given from official calculation and which raises the number to an average of two million and four hundred thousand, is only an approximate computation, and probably below the truth[...]^[1]

The Armenians inhabiting Turkey in Europe are scarcely four hundred thousand, of which more than half reside in Constantinople, the others are scattered through Thrace and Bulgaria. On the other hand, Turkey in Asia contains not less than two million Armenians, the majority of whom still inhabit the ancient territory of their forefathers in the neighborhood of Mount Ararat; the three eyalets of Erzeroum, Diarbekir and Kurdistan contain many villages peopled entirely by Armenians, and in these provinces, notwithstanding frequent migrations, the Armenians preserve a numerical superiority over the Turkish and Turkoman races.^[1]

A 20th century Turkish professor, İbrahim Hakkı Akyol, also considers the 1844 census as an underestimation of the total Ottoman population because the taxes to be set for each vilayet and kaza would be based on the census result, and the population wanted to avoid them. In 1867 the 2.4 million figure remains unchanged, and was used by Ottoman official Salaheddin Bey in a book published on the occasion of the International Exposition in Paris. On the same occasion, an Ottoman Armenian official named Migirdich Bey Dadian gives a 3.4 million figure which the Ottoman government did not contest.^[1]

After the internationalization of the Armenian Question, and the Treaty of Berlin that followed in 1878, the idea of a self governing Armenian nation became a possibility. Thus, census records of the Armenian population became important. The first record of the General Population Administration under Abdul Hamid was half the figure in 1881-1882. The Ottoman Empire in 1877-78 lost Batumi, Kars and Ardahan. The Armenian population statistics for those regions would have influenced the losses of Armenian population but can not account for the other million or more Armenians that are missing in the records of 1881-1882 under the reign of Sultan Hamid.

Armenian population to 1905

From 1881-1882 to the 1905 census, there was a near constant increase in census statistics for the Armenian population.

The Ottoman statistics had been used by an American demographer and Ottoman expert, professor Justin McCarthy who mostly relied on those census figures to determine the Armenian population within the Ottoman Empire. McCarthy's records are mostly based on those of 1911-1912, 1905 and 1895-1896. By using the Ottoman population records and applying the population stability theory (using the men half pyramid) he provided the figure of 1,698,301.^[2]

While McCarthy numbers are the result of extensive studies, they have been highly contested by many specialists. Some of them, like Frédéric Paulin, have severely criticized McCarthy's methodology and suggested that it is flawed.^[3] Hilmar Kaiser^[4] another specialist has made similar claims, as have professor Vahakn N. Dadrian^[5] and professor Levon Marashlian.^[6]

The critics not only question McCarthy's methodology and resulting calculations, but also his primary sources, the Ottoman censuses. They point out that there was no official statistic census in 1912; rather those numbers were based on the records of 1905 which were conducted during the reign of Sultan Hamid.^[7]

Censuses of Sultan Hamid

The fact that the 1912 records are based on a census that was conducted under the Hamidian regime, according to the critics, makes it dubious. Turkish records as also suggest that Sultan Hamid might have intentionally undercounted the Armenian population.

The Turkish author Kâzım Kadri writes, “During the reign of Abdul Hamid we lowered the population figures of the Armenians...” He adds, “By the order of Abdul Hamid the number of the Armenians deliberately had been put in low figures.”^[8]

Other evidence suggests such undercounts cut in half the actual Armenian population. In the district of Mus (compromising Mus plain, Sassoun, and the counties of Mus) for example, the Armenian official in charge of the census, Garabed Potigian, presented the official figures as 225,000 Armenians and 55,000 Turks. Upon the insistence of his Turkish superiors he was forced to reduce the Armenian population to 105,000 and increase the Turkish population to 95,000.^[9] Lynch himself report similar incidences: “Pursuing our way, we meet an Armenian priest—a young, broad-shouldered, open-faced man. He seems inclined to speak, so we ask him how many churches there may be in Mush(Mus). He answers, seven; but the commissary had said four. A soldier addresses him in Kurdish; the poor fellow turns pale, and remarks that he was mistaken in saying seven; there cannot be more than four ...Such are a few of our experiences during our short sojourn at Mush.”^[10]

Sultan Hamid apparently considered the under evaluation presented to him of 900,000 as exaggeration.^[11]

The German chief of staff of the Ottoman Third Army, Colonel Felix Guse, complained that "The Turks knew only poorly their country, on top of that the possibility of getting reliable statistical figures was out of the question.^[12]

Fa'iz El-Ghusein, the Kaimakam of Kharpout, wrote in his book, that according to the Ottoman official statistics there were about 1.9 million Armenian's in the Ottoman Empire.^[13]

Another indication that other statistics might have existed is that Polybius in his book published in 1919, refer to a said “Ottoman Official Census of 1910.”^[14] But Justin McCarthy has questioned the information and considered it fabrication.^[15]

The Turkish historian Dr. Secil Akgun, claimed: “The Ottomans do not have a definite number. That is, we have in our hands contradictory numbers regarding the Armenian population within the borders of the Ottoman Empire. I would think that Basmacıyan gives the most accurate number. This is to be between two and three million.”^[16]

Other census problems

Another problem arises, and it is the fact that the Ottoman census statistics have maintained constant increase for the Armenian population from the period where between 1894–1897, an estimated 100,000 to 300,000 Armenians lost their lives during the Hamidian massacres. While the minimum in the range represent the Armenian increases of population over years, the 1905 census hasn't shown any anomaly of Armenian increases, which suggest that there might have been a fixed quota of Armenian population, and that regardless of the census, there were much more Armenians within the Empire.

Another element that add, is that many Armenians, like many Jews and Christians, were considered as foreigners, because they had foreign nationalities or enjoyed the protection of foreign consulates and those for were not counted in those census statistics.

To this, add that Armenians were as well purposely undercounting themselves to escape the military tax by not registering.

The result of all those factors, is that the Armenian population censuses, according to the specialists that criticize them, is an important under counting of the Armenian population, that could have gone as far as misrepresenting it by half. Lynch critic itself regarding the inclusion of all the Muslims together, when there were probably Armenians in the count, is supported by the Ottoman census, that contain an anomaly that in some region like Van, the Muslim population from one census to another jumped to about 50%, suggesting that numbers for the Ottoman government could have been used as political tool, and went as far as transferring Armenians in the table as Muslim.

In short, even though the Ottoman records were official data, and that few Western specialists and most Turkish specialists rely on them, most Western scholars ignore this data, because according to them it is unreliable.

Official Ottoman Census

There were 1,219,323 Armenians in the Subdivisions of the Ottoman Empire according to the last Ottoman census 1914^[17]

Province(Vilâyets)	Muslim Men/Women Population	Armenian Men/Women Population	Province(Vilâyets)	Muslim Men/Women Population	Armenian Men/Women Population
İstanbul	560.434	84.093	Sivas	939.735	151.674
Edirne	325.883	19.883	Niğde	227.100	5.705
Karesi	359.804	8.604	Antalya	235.762	630
İzmit	126.859	57.786	Canik	265.950	28.576
Çatalca	20.048	842	Menteşe	188.916	12
Kale-i sultaniye	149.903	2.541	Aydın	1.249.067	20.766
Hüdavendigâr	276.737	61.191	Bolu	399.281	2.972
Kütahya and Eskişehir	387.231	9.058	Kastamonu	737.302	8.959
Karahisarısahib	277.659	7.448	Trabzon	921.128	40.237
Konya	750.712	13.225	Erzurum	673.297	136.618
Ankara	933.980	58.254	Suriye	777.603	3.245
Adana	443.937	58.027	Beyrut	642.816	5.233
Haleb	692.699	86.085	Harput	446.376	87.862
Kayseri	184.292	52.192	Van	179.380	67.792
Jerusalem	266.044	3.043	Bitlis	309.999	119.132
Zor	65.770	283	Total	14.155.755**(Turks and other Muslims)	1.219.323* (Armenians)
Urfa	141.151	17.352

Armenian Patriarchate statistics

Armenian Patriarchate figures

The Armenian National Constitution of 1863 granted by the Ottoman Sultan to the Ottoman Armenians in 1863 authorized the Armenian Patriarchate of Constantinople to collect population figures of all Armenians in the Empire. A first attempt was delegated to Karekin Vartabed Srvantsdiants in 1878, who made two trips to Armenian vilayets in 1878 and 1879. However, in certain areas, Kurdish tribes that had taken by force the Armenian villages and would not allow him entry. Moreover, the Armenians probably minimized their number fearing of increased taxation, and parish records were deficient or non-existent. The 1878 attempt was a failure and was not published.^[1]

Various Armenian Patriarchate figures were presented, but one of those that seemed the most complete was published in La Question Arménienne à la lumière des documents by Marcel Léart (Krikor Zohrab).^[18] Zohrab states that there are 2,660,000 Armenians residing in Ottoman lands by referring to the 1882 Patriarchal population figure.^[1] It is said that the records were supposedly based on records of baptisms and deaths kept by the ecclesiastical officials. Those figures though excluded the regions where Armenian population was not considerable, as well as excluded the areas outside of the six vilayets.

The problem with such numbers, is that there have been no records on whether or not the statistics were really based on baptism and death certificates kept by the ecclesiastical officials. For this reason, Justin McCarthy and few other Western scholars as well as most Turkish specialists believe them to be fabrications. Just for comparison, the Patriarchate Statistics of Armenian's in the “Six Vilayets” known as Ottoman Armenia, there was a reported 1,018,000 Armenian's against 784,914 for the Ottoman figures.

Figures by the Armenian Patriarch of Constantinople from February 1913 to August 1914:^[1][19]

Vilayet	Armenian population
Bitlis Vilayet	218,404
Sivas Vilayet	204,472
Erzurum Vilayet	202,391
Aleppo Vilayet	189,565
Istanbul	163,670
Ankara Vilayet	135,869
Mamuretülaziz Vilayet	124,289
Adana Vilayet	119,414
Bursa Vilayet	118,992
Van Vilayet	110,897
Diyâr-ı Bekr Vilayet	106,867
Trebizond Vilayet	73,395
İzmit Vilayet	61,675
Edirne Vilayet	30,316
Aidin Vilayet	21,145
Konya Vilayet	20,738
Kastamonu Vilayet	13,461
TOTAL	1,914,620

Reanalysis of Armenian Patriarchate figures

Another set of Armenian Patriarchate figures figures were published in 1913. Armenian sources records for this statistic have more ground than the first one in that they are based on actual archival records. In 1992, Raymond H. Kevorkian and Paul B. Paboudjian have published a work which present “precision” to the last digit, for each Ottoman provinces from the Armenian archives. For the figure of the entire Ottoman population, those records indicate 1,914,620^[20] closely matching with the Ottoman statistics for the Western part of the empire, but diverge in the Eastern zone, where the Ottoman statistics are suspected to have considerably undercounted the Armenian population. And even in some instances, the actual Ottoman counts after McCarthy's correction were higher in some regions than those statistics, indicating that those figures might have been possibly a serious records and might have under-counted Armenian's in some instances.

Western records

There have been various Western records representing the Armenian population, but demographic figures representing the total Armenian population within the Ottoman Empire were few.

Number of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire by different sources

The list of different numbers of Armenians living in the ottoman Empire by Western sources.^[21]

According to	Date	Number of Armenians
M.Zarceshi (French Counsul at Van)		1,300,000
Francis de Pressence	1895	1,260,000
Torumnekize	1900	1,300,000
Lynch	1901	1,158,484
Ottoman census	1905	1,294,851
British Blue Book	1912	1,056,000
L.D. Conterson	1913	1,400,000
French Yellow Book		1,475,000
Report of "French Armenian" committee	March 1, 1914	1,280,000 542,421 (East Anatolia)
Armenian Patriarchate Ormanian		1,579,000
Johannes Lepsius		1,600,000
Krokor-Zohrab (estimate of Patriarchate)		2,560,000+
Armenian historian K.S. Basmachian		2,380,000+
By Armenian delegation given at the Paris Peace Conference	1919	2,250,000+
By Eleftherios Venizelos at the Paris Peace Conference (pre. World War I, 1914)	December 30, 1918	2,100,000 1,260,000+ (Living in 1918)
Letter by Boghos Nubar to French Ministry	December 11, 1918	700,000+ 390,000 (Alive in Caucasus, Persia, Syria, Iraq)
National Geographic, page 329	October 1915	2,000,000 (All area including Persia, Russia)
Grabill, page 51		1,800,000-2,000,000 (All over the empire)
New York Times	October 22, 1915	1,200,000
Zurcher, page 119-120 "Turkey"		1,500,000
Encyclopædia Britannica	1914	1,500,000
National Geographic page 61	July 1918	2,000,0000 (Total Empire population 18,000,000)
Katchaawuni H. - living in 1920 (after emigration and loses) nearly		1,000,000
Armenian historian Yervand Lalayan - detailed, living in Armenia only in 1918		885,000 690,500 (in Armenia only in 1920) 195,000 (deaths in Armenia under the Dashnak rule)
Armenian historian Kevork Aslan		1,800,000
Revue de Paris		1,300,000
Turkish census	1927	123,602

French

Vital Cuinet was a French geographer that was charged to survey areas and count their population. His figures were also used to establish the ability of the Ottoman Empire to pay its debts, Cuinet eager to get precise numbers was finally forced to conclude that it was not possible to get them, he gives two main reasons for this.

1. The limitations imposed by the Turkish authorities made his researches inconclusive.
2. Because of the lack of control of the Turkish authorities for farther provinces, it was impossible for him to complete his work.

An example often referred by the critics, was Cuinet's statistics drawn from Turkish authority numbers and information that they provided him regarding the Vilayet of Aleppo (classified in those works as the sandjak of Marash). The number is an impossible 4,300. While only in the city of Marash the Catholic and Protestant Armenians were numbering 6008, and this without including the Gregorians.

Cuinet at the beginning of his work, cautioned the reader by declaring: "The science of statistics so worthy and interesting, not only still is not used in this country but even the authorities refuses, with a party line, to accept any investigation."

Regardless of what could have been considered as an indirect admission of under counting. Cuinet presented 840,000 for 1891-92, of what was called “Armenian Villayet” a figure higher than the one presented from Ottoman statistics.^[22]

British

Henry Finnis Bloss Lynch, a British geographer-ethnographer, in completing his own studies, came up with 1,058,000 for the beginning of 1890s for Turkish Armenia. Lynch indicated, like Cuinet, that there was a seemly deliberate Ottoman policy of under counting. Nonetheless, Lynch figures were well circulated, but he cautioned the reader regarding the misleading character of the term “Muslim” since many Armenians converted and were counted as Muslim, while they were still practicing Armenian Christians.^[23]

The British official figures at the embassy relied upon careful investigations like those of Lynch. When comparing those figures with Ottoman figures, Zamir concludes: "the provinces of Van, Bitlis, Mamuretal-Aziz (Harput), Diyarbekir, Erzerum, and the independent district of Maras, where British figures are 62 percent higher (847,000) compared with 523,065.” For those reasons he was forced to conclude: “The understatement of the non-Moslem figures appears to be intentional."^[24]

Britannica itself takes the figure of 1,750,000 as "a reasonable representation of the Armenian population in Anatolia prior to 1915."^[25]

German

The German professor, Herman Wambery presented as figures for Turkish Armenia: 1,130,000 in 1896.^[26]

American

Samuel Cox at the American Embassy in Istanbul from 1880 to 1886, estimated the Armenian population within the empire to be of 2,4 million.^[27]

Problems

The problem with such figures is that they do not cover the same regions. For instance, many time “Anatolia” is equalled with the Ottoman empire. Other times there are partial statistics representing one region, like Turkish Armenia, Ottoman Armenia, Asiatic Turkey, Anatolia, Ottoman Empire, 6 Armenian Villeyets, 9 Armenian Villeyets etc.

Another problem with the figures is that those numbers were drawn from a period of about 20 to 30 years, mostly from 1890 to 1915.

German official figures representing the Armenian population within the Empire were about 1.9 million to 2 million.^[28]

Toynbee settle on between 1.6 to 2.0 million, and states that the real number is probably closer to 2 million for Anatolia. Pushing the median slightly on the right side of 1.8 million.^[29]

Ludovic de Contenson, present the figure of 1,150,000 for Asiatic Turkey, and call them “statistics” without any sources. His numbers suggest that they might actually be the Ottoman census statistics, without correction.^[30]

Conclusion of Western scholars

Most (whatever this may mean) Western scholars believe the totality of the Armenian population within the Empire prior to 1915 to be between 1.8 and 2.1 million.

Armenians in the Ottoman Empire by vilayets

See also: Armenian education in the Ottoman Empire

Information about the Armenian population (1914, 1922), settlements, churches and schools^[31]

Vilayets/regions	Settlements	Churches	Schools
Erzurum Vilayet	425	482	322
Van Vilayet	450	537	192
Diyâr-ı Bekr Vilayet	249	158	122
Mamuretülaziz Vilayet	279	307	204
Bitlis Vilayet	618	671	207
Sivas Vilayet	241	219	204
Trebizond Vilayet	118	109	190
Western Anatolia	237	281	300
Cilicia and Northern Syria	187	537	176
European Turkey	58	67	79
Ottoman Empire	2,925	3,368	1,996

References

1. ^ ^{a b c d e f g} Sarkis, Y. Karayan (April 24, 2010), Massis Weekly (Los Angeles): 6–8, http://www.massisweekly.com/Vol30/issue14/massis14.pdf, retrieved May 31, 2010 
2. ^ Justin McCarthy, Muslims and Minorities: The Population of Ottoman Anatolia and the End of the Empire, New York Univ Press, 1983.
3. ^ Frédéric Paulin, Négationnisme et théorie des populations stables : le cas du génocide arménien, in Hervé Lebras (dir.), L’Invention des populations. Biologie, Idéologie et politique, Editions Odile Jacob, 2000.
4. ^ Hilmar Kaiser, a German expert on the Armenian genocide, also criticizes McCarthy's calculation techniques in an interview with Dirk van Delft published in the NRC Handelsblad, p. 51, Amsterdam, Saturday, 27 May 2000
5. ^ Vahakn N. Dadrian, Warrant for Genocide: Key Elements of Turko-Armenian Conflict, New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1999. See also his essay: Ottoman Archives and Denial of the Armenian Genocide, in The Armenian Genocide: History, Politics, Ethics, R.G. Hovanissian, ed. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992 pp. 294-7
6. ^ Levon Marashlian, Politics and Demography: Armenians, Turks and Kurds in the Ottoman Empire, Zoryan Inst for Contemporary Armenian Research & Documentation Inc. September, 1990
7. ^ Kemal H. Karpat, Ottoman Population 1830-1914: Demographic and Social Characteristics, Madiscon, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985. See also Tableau indicant le nombre des divers éléments de la population dans l'Empire Ottoman au 1er Mars 1330 (14 Mars 1914), Istanbul: Zellitch Brothers, 1919. Foreword by Refet. FO 371/4229/86552. May 1919.
8. ^ Hüseyin Kâzım Kadri, Balkanlardan Hicaza: Imparatorlugun Tasfiyesi. 10 Temmuz Inkilâbı ve Netayici, Istanbul: Pınar, 1992. Originally published in Ottoman Turkish in 1920 in Istanbul by Islam and Askeri Publishers. p. 126, 133; in the original Ottoman version, p. 116, 123. Cited as well in Vahakn N. Dadrian, Warrant for Genocide p. 173
9. ^ See: Sarkis Pteyani Hushere,' in Harazat Patmutiun Tarono, Cairo: Sahag-Mesrob, 1962 p. 22 for such undercounting examples. Also cited in Vahakn N. Dadrian, Warrant for Genocide [notes 13] p. 187
10. ^ H.F.B. Lynch, Armenia. Travels and Studies, Vol. 2, Beirut, Khayats, 1965, p. 171
11. ^ Sultan II. Abdülhamid Han, Devlet ve Memleket Görüşlerim, A. Alaeddin Çetin and Ramazan Yıldız, eds. (Istanbul: Çigir, 1976) p. 158
12. ^ Felix Guse, Die Kaukasusfront im Weltkrieg, Liebzig: Koehler und Amelang, 1940, p. 83
13. ^ El-Ghusein, Fà'iz (1917). Martyred Armenia. p. 7. 
14. ^ See "Greek Population" in Justin McCarthy, Muslims and Minorities: The Population of Ottoman Anatolia and the End of the Empire, New York Univ Press, 1983
15. ^ Ibid
16. ^ Interview published in the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet, April 27, 1987
17. ^ 1914 Ottoman Census[1]
18. ^ Marcel Léart (Krikor Zohrab), La Question Arménienne à la lumière des documents, Paris : A. Challamel, 1913
19. ^ THE POPULATION OF THE OTTOMAN ARMENIANS by Justin McCarthy
20. ^ Raymond H. Kevorkian and Paul B. Paboudjian, Les Arméniens dans l'Empire Ottoman à la vielle du génocide, Ed. ARHIS, Paris, 1992
21. ^ The So-Called Armenian Issue
22. ^ For the entire Cuinet account see: Vital Cuinet, La Turquie d'Asie : géographie administrative, statistique, descriptive et raisonée de chaque province de l'Asie-Mineure, 4 vols., Paris, 1890-95. See also a useful description and critic of Cuinets figures by Sarkis Y. Karayan, Vital Cuinet’s La Turquie d’Asie: A Critical Evaluation of Cuinet’s Information about Armenians, Journal of the Society for Armenian Studies, Volume 11, 2000
23. ^ For his accounts see H.F.B. Lynch, Armenia. Travels and Studies, Vol. 2, Beirut, Khayats, 1965, or the previous version published in 1901
24. ^ Meir Zamir, Population Statistics of the Ottoman Empire in 1914 and 1919, Middle Eastern Studies 17, 1981, p.81
25. ^ "Armenian massacres" (2006). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved July 12, 2006
26. ^ Herman Wambery, published in Deutsche Rundschau, February 1896
27. ^ Samuel Cox, Diversions of a Diplomat in Turkey, New York, 1893
28. ^ An example of such a figure was provided in a report, A.A. Türkei 183/44. A27493, October 4, 1916. (German archives)
29. ^ The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, Documents presented to Viscount Grey of Fallodon, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs By Viscount Bryce, London 1916
30. ^ Ludovic de Contenson, Les Réformes en Turquie d'Asie. 2nd ed., Paris, 1913, pp. 10,17
31. ^ ARMENIAN GENOCIDE MUSEUM

See also

• Armenian Genocide
• Ottoman Armenian casualties
• Armenians in the Ottoman Empire
• Armenians in Turkey