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.
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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.
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.
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]
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]
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.
In fact Ottoman census didn't define any ethnic groups, only religious ones. In this context Armenian meant an adherent of Armenian Apostolic Church not an ethnic Armenian. Ethnic Armenians who claimed to be Muslims were counted as Muslims, Armenian Protestants were counted as others. So Ottoman records aren't reliable sources- the problem is that they don't give the ethnic breakup of the population, only the religious one.
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 | |||
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 |
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.
There have been various Western records representing the Armenian population, but demographic figures representing the total Armenian population within the Ottoman Empire were few.
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 |
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.
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]
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]
The German professor, Herman Wambery presented as figures for Turkish Armenia: 1,130,000 in 1896.[26]
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]
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]
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.
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 |