THE ARMENIAN RELOCATION:

THE CASE FOR MILITARY NECESSITY

(ERMEN TEHCR:
ASKER MECBURYET GEREKES)

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Jeremy SALT

Bilkent University

Ottomans and Armenians. A Study in Counterinsurgency.

Author: Edward J. Erickson, (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 299
pages.
Abstract: This article focuses on the questions of insurgency and
military necessity as a reason for moving the bulk of the Armenian
population from the eastern provinces of the Ottoman Empire in the
second half of 1915. It looks at precedent and parallel cases of
relocations in military history and follows the course of the war as it
was fought by the Ottoman government from late 1914, on the battle front
and behind the lines, until the Van uprising of April, 1915, precipitated
the decision to relocate the Armenian civilian population.
Keywords: Ottoman Empire, World War I, Committee for Union and
Progress, Russia, Britain, Sarkam, Van, Caucasus, Syria, Armenians,
Kurds, Assyrians, relocation, insurgency, Tekilat i-Mahsusa, druzhiny,
wartime trials.
zet: Bu makale 1915in ikinci yarsnda Ermeni nfusunun
ounluunun Osmanl mparatorluunun dou vilayetlerinden
tanmasna dayanak oluturmas asndan ayaklanma ve askeri
mecburiyet sorunlarn incelemektedir. Makale askeri tarihte emsal
oluturan ve paralellik tayan rnekleri irdelemekte ve hem cephede hem
de cephe gerisinde Osmanl hkmeti tarafndan 1914n sonlarndan
1915 Nisan aynda sivil Ermeni nfusunun yer deitirmesi kararnn
alnmasn hzlandran Van ayaklanmasna kadar savan izledii seyri
incelemektedir.
Anahtar kelimeler: Osmanl mparatorluu, Birinci Dnya Sava,
ttihat ve Terakki, Rusya, ngiltere, Sarkam, Van, Kafkasya, Suriye,
Ermeniler, Krtler, Asuriler, Tehcir, Ayaklanma, Tekilat- Mahsusa,
druzhiny, sava dnemi yarglamalar.

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Assoc. Prof. Dr. Jeremy Salt

No scholar outside Turkey has done as much work on the Ottoman military as
Edward Erickson. His books on the Balkans War (1912-13) and the First World
War are standard reference works. For the first time a scholar was turning his
attention to these wars from the perspective of the Ottoman military command
rather than the viewpoint of countries attacking the Ottoman Empire. His basic
source material is the records of the Ottoman military. He is a seriously good
scholar and thus when he writes on such a controversial issue as the fate of
Armenians during the war, even those who are reflexively compelled to knock
him down are going to have a hard time doing it. In this latest work, Dr
Erickson presents a powerful case for military necessity being the only motive
behind the decision to relocate the bulk of the
Armenian population from the empires
Relocations are an ugly
eastern provinces and eventually somewhat
aspect of war. They often
further afield, in 1915.
have disastrous
consequences for the
people being moved but
they are not unique in the
history of warfare.

Relocations are an ugly aspect of war. They

often have disastrous consequences for the
people being moved but they are not unique in
the history of warfare. In modern history,
Erickson refers to some examples: the Spanish
repression of a Cuban uprising in 1895-96 involving the emptying of rebellious
provinces of between 400,000 and 600,000 people and their removal to camps
under a program called la recontracia; the relocation of civilians to US zones
of protection in the Philippines during the Spanish-American war of 1898; the
removal of about 100,000 Boers and another 100,000 African civilians to
concentration camps during the Boer War (1899-1902); the removal by the
Russian government of up to half a million Germans from southern Russia and
the Caucasus to Siberia in 1914; the removal of Japanese to US detention
camps during the Second World War; the relocation of up to 500,000 ethnic
Chinese to new villages by the British during their postwar occupation of
Malaya; the removal by the French of up to 800,000 Algerians to regroupment
centres in the 1950s; and the relocation by the US by force, persuasion and
intimidation of more than 8.5 million civilians to protected or strategic
hamlets during the Vietnam war in the 1960s. The chief adviser to the US
military command for this operation was Robert Thomson, the architect of the
forcible relocation of ethnic Chinese in post-war Malaya. The relocation of
Vietnamese by the US military command followed the relocation by the French
of some three million Vietnamese to protected villages (agrovilles) during
1952-54.
In all of these cases the rationale was the same the clearing away of a civilian
population to deny insurgents any and all forms of support. The suffering of
civilians during these shifts was also similar, varying only in intensity and

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The Armenian Relocation: The Case For Military Necessity

degree. Having reviewed some of the parallel cases, Dr Erickson looks at the
detail in the Ottoman Empire as a Russian-backed Armenian insurgency took
root in 1914 and swelled into a general movement across the eastern provinces
in 1915. Both the British and the Russians wooed ethno-religious Ottoman
groups Armenians, Assyrians, Kurds and Arabs - as part of their war effort.
Michael Reynolds has told some of the story from the Russian side.1Even
before the Ottoman government joined the war, the Tsarist government
approved the arming of Ottoman Armenians and the provocation of an
uprising at an opportune moment. As early as August, 1914, General
Yudenich, chief of staff of the Russian army in the Caucasus, advocated the
establishment of an Armenian fifth column inside Ottoman lands and the
smuggling of arms across the border.2 The Tsar told the Armenian Catholicos,
Kevork, to tell your flock, Holy Father, that a most brilliant future awaits the
Armenians.3
Both the Armenians and the Assyrians were used up by their erstwhile
supporters. The Armenians had been through this before, in the late 19th
century, when the British meddled in their affairs under the guise of
humanitarian concern. Their real purpose was to establish a British presence
in eastern Anatolia to block the machinations of the Russians. The British
governments plan for reforms an ethnographical reorganization of the
eastern provinces based on the separation of Armenians from Kurds foundered not just on the opposition of the sultan and his government but
on the lack of competent officials to oversee this plan and the lack of money
to pay for it. The British government was not prepared to foot the bill and
the Ottoman government, bankrupt by 1876, forced to submit to foreign
control of its revenues in 1881 and hostile to these reforms anyway, could
not. Blundering on, the British government antagonized the Kurds by
referring to a region in which Muslims predominantly Kurdish were more
than 80 per cent of the population as Armenia. When the crisis broke in
the 1890s, with the eastern provinces collapsing into large-scale violence,
the British threw up their hands in horror, retreated, blamed someone else
(the wicked sultan) and left the Armenians to fend for themselves as best as
they could.
This was the template for the fate of Armenians and the Assyrians in 1914-18.
Russia was out of the war by 1917 but the British treated the Armenians and
Assyrians as an expendable raw material from beginning to end. They lured
these vulnerable minorities into the war with assurances of support for
1

Michael A. Reynolds, Shattering Empires. The Clash and Collapse of the Ottoman and Russian Empires 1908-1918
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011).

Erickson, p.144

Reynolds, p.143

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Assoc. Prof. Dr. Jeremy Salt

autonomy or independence if they would only just join the entente cause. They
then used their suffering for propaganda purposes and when the war was over
- when they had no further use for them - they abandoned them. The Bolsheviks
gave the Armenians their autonomous republic but the Assyrians ended up with
nothing. They were urged by the British to keep fighting from northwestern
Persia. Overwhelmed by Ottoman and Kurdish tribal forces they fled into Iraq.
Their trek led them into refugee camps where they waited in vain for the British
to redeem their promises of a homeland. Their ancestors in Iraq are now
suffering the malign consequences for them and their churches of a more recent
intervention in their lands, the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. The destruction
of Iraq as a unitary state and the deliberate
creation of a weak central government against
British lured these
a strong government on the periphery (the
vulnerable minorities into
Kurdish north) has paved the way for the rise
the war with assurances of
of Islamic jihadist groups unknown in
support for autonomy or
Saddams time. Their concept of an Islamic
independence if they
emirate stretching across the central lands of
would only just join the
the Middle East has involved the destruction
entente cause.
and desecration of the ancient Christian
churches of the east in both Iraq and Syria.
Again, because their prime concern is to bring down the government in
Damascus, the US, French and British governments have turned a blind eye to
the collateral damage being suffered by these eastern Christians.
By late 1914 the Russian and Ottoman government were already engaged in
an undeclared but active state of war in the Black Sea provinces of their
empires4, with the Ottoman government using the Tekilat i-Mahsusa (Special
Organization), a propaganda and black operations body fighting the Russians
and Armenian insurgents and carrying weapons to local Muslim people.
Erickson dates the formation of this organization back to late November, 1913,
and ascribes its origins to the need for a force to generate Muslim resistance to
the victorious Christian powers in the Balkans.5 Stanford Shaw, on the other
hand, regarded the organization as the outgrowth of Ottoman intelligence
groups established during the 19th century, notably Sultan Abdulhamits Yildiz
Palace intelligence service (Yildiz Istihbarat Tekilati).6
The key military event as 1914 turned into 1915 was the Ottoman assault on
Sarkam, starting brilliantly but ending catastrophically, with frightful
weather and dogged Russian leadership combining to turn the tables on the

68

Erickson, p.147

Erickson, p.112.

Stanford J.Shaw, The Ottoman Empire in World War 1 (Ankara: Trk Tarih Kurumu, 2006), Vol 1, p.355. Erickson
(p.111) rejects outright the claim that the Tekilat i-Mahsusa was set up for the prime purpose of liquidating the
Armenian civilian population.

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The Armenian Relocation: The Case For Military Necessity

Ottomans. Caught in a blizzard without winter clothing, many Ottoman soldiers

simply froze to death. Erickson puts the Ottoman casualties at 33,000 dead and
10,000 wounded7, with a further 7000 men being taken captive. Writing of the
consequences, Michael Reynolds concludes that not until 1918 and the
disintegration of the Russian army would the Ottomans again be able to go on
the strategic offensive on the Caucasian front.8
By early 1915, Armenian uprisings in the east had crystallized into a general
insurgency being launched across the region. That, at least, is how it appeared
to the Ottoman military command. It was well aware of Armenian activities.
From late 1914 into the first half of 1915,
reports poured in of clashes with insurgents
By the middle of 1915
and the disruption of lines of supply and
thousands of Ottoman
communication. These lines, supporting action
Armenians were fighting
against the Russians in the Caucasus and the
behind the lines, in
British in Mesopotamia and Palestine ran
addition to the thousands
directly through the rear areas of the Ottoman
enlisted in the Russian
armies in eastern Anatolia that were heavily
Armenian volunteer units
populated by Armenian communities and, by
known as druzhiny, which
were tasked with
extension, by the heavily armed Armenian
liberating Ottoman
revolutionary committees.9 None of the
provinces in which the
Ottoman armies on the Caucasian,
Armenians were in a
Mesopotamian or Palestinian fronts were selfsmall minority.
sufficient in food, fodder, stock animals,
ammunition and medicine but had to rely on
continuous supplies from the west. 10 In the eastern Anatolian provinces, front
line units could be 900 kilometers from the nearest railhead.11 Over a vast area,
most supplies had to be moved by wagon across long stretches of undefended
dirt tracks. In isolated areas, with few men available as guards, these lines of
communication were especially vulnerable to insurgent disruption.
By the middle of 1915 thousands of Ottoman Armenians were fighting behind
the lines, in addition to the thousands enlisted in the Russian Armenian
volunteer units known as druzhiny, which were tasked with liberating
Ottoman provinces in which the Armenians were in a small minority and
scattered across the region anyway. The hotspots were the regions around Van,
Erzurum, Erzincan, Bitlis, Mu, Elazig (Harput), Sivas and Malatya, with
reports from the southeast around Drtyol indicating that the British were
7

Erickson, p.155

Reynolds, p.125

Erickson, pp.161-62

10

Erickson, p.162

11

Erickson, p.174

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Assoc. Prof. Dr. Jeremy Salt

contemplating the opening of a new front in the eastern Mediterranean with

the support of local Armenians.
All of this has to be seen as Ottoman commanders would have seen it. By the
middle of 1915, Ottoman armies were fighting on three fronts, Gallipoli, the
Caucasus and Mesopotamia. Already severely weakened by the Balkans war,
and the more immediate catastrophe of Sarkam, the Ottoman army was in
no position to fight a multi-front war and, as well, fend off thousands of
insurgents sabotaging the war effort from behind the lines. The military
command had no plans to deal with such an insurgency and no strategic reserve
in the interior to protect lines of communication. The manpower available
consisted mainly of elderly reservists and jandarma. Under stress on several
fronts, the military command was draining the interior of such soldiers as it
did have there and sending them to the front. Cities, towns and villages as well
as the lines of communication were vulnerable to attack. Many communities
were basically on their own.
This deteriorating situation reached a peak with the Van uprising in April, 1915,
launched as the British were about to land troops at Gallipoli and the Russians
were about to engage with an Ottoman force around Dilman in northwestern
Persia. Thousands of well-armed Armenians took part. The fighting continued
into May, with tens of thousands of Muslims fleeing the region in what became
known as the byk kagn (great flight). The governor of Van finally fled on
May 16, by which time much of the city had been destroyed and many of its
Muslim inhabitants killed. The Armenians consolidated their victory with
murderous attacks on Muslim villages around the nearby lake which today
would be called ethnic cleansing. The village of Zeve, crowded with refugees
from other regions, was, in particular, the site of terrible atrocities. Van was
declared an Armenian republic before being incorporated into the Caucasian
committee of the All Russian Union of Towns (Sogor), which appointed an
Armenian as chief administrator. The main street was renamed Sogorskii
Prospekt.12
With the exception of brief withdrawals as Ottoman forces approached in late
July, 1915, and again in July, 1916, Russian and Armenian forces held Van
until April, 1918.The contemporary debate over whether the Van uprising was
defensive in nature, as Armenians would claim, or whether it was a wellplanned offensive, is completely immaterial to the thinking of the Ottoman
high command. All it saw was that an important regional city had fallen to
Armenians and Russians, and that unless drastic measures were taken, other
vulnerable cities were likely to follow. The extent to which the Van uprising
12

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Halit Dundar Akarca, The Russian Administration of the Occupied Ottoman Territories During the First World War
1915-1917, MA thesis, Department of International Relations, Bilkent University, February, 2002.

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The Armenian Relocation: The Case For Military Necessity

may have been coordinated with the Russian and British military high
commands remains an open question.
Unable to stem the spreading insurgency, the Ottoman government responded
quickly after Van. On April 24, about a week after the launching of the uprising,
it closed down the Armenian national/revolutionary committees in Istanbul and
arrested hundreds of their members or Armenians believed to be sympathetic
to their aims. Most were sent to Cankr and Aya in the Anatolian interior
around Ankara. Towards the end of May on the recommendation of the
military the government ordered the relocation of the bulk of the Armenian
population in the war zones to Syria and Iraq.
By early 1916, when the government ordered
In fact there was a direct
a stop to the relocations, about half a million
threat by the insurgent
Armenians had been wrenched from their
revolutionary
committees
homes and sent southwards. The relocations
to the lines of
were slowed down in tandem with the success
communication upon
of counter-insurgency operations in the second
which the logistics of the
half of 1915. Orders went out to various cities
Ottoman armies on three
in October to halt the relocation and by
fronts depended. The
consequence of failing to
January, 1916, it was officially ended although
supply adequately its
many Armenians were still on the move.13
armies in contact with the
Russians, in particular,
must have led to the defeat
of the Ottoman Empire.
The Ottoman high
command could not take
that chance.

Without the manpower available to crush the

insurgents, Erickson believes that the decision
to deprive them of their support base by
removing the civilian population was a
strategy of poverty.14 Was such a measure
justified on the grounds of military necessity,
as cruel and as harsh as the consequences
were? Erickson answers the question thus: From the perspective of what the
Ottoman government believed what was happening the answer is yes. In fact
there was a direct threat by the insurgent revolutionary committees to the lines
of communication upon which the logistics of the Ottoman armies on three
fronts depended. The consequence of failing to supply adequately its armies
in contact with the Russians, in particular, must have led to the defeat of the
Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman high command could not take that chance.15
From the military perspective, did the removal of the Armenian civilian task
achieve the objective of clearing the ground so that the insurgent threat could
13

Erickson, pp. 210-11

14

Erickson, p. 183

15

Erickson, pp.213-14

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Assoc. Prof. Dr. Jeremy Salt

be finished off? Erickson believes that it did. The relocation of the Armenian
population and the associated destruction of the Armenian revolutionary
committees ended what the Ottoman government believed was an existential
threat to the Ottoman state and the empire survived to fight on until late
1918.16 The tactics used during counter-insurgency operation in the second
half of 1915 included search and destroy missions in the countryside and the
use of artillery against insurgents entrenched in towns. In the meantime,
Armenians being moved southwards were attacked by Kurdish and Arab tribes
out for plunder or revenge for the killing of Muslims (often Kurds) by
Armenian bands.
The fate of the Armenians cannot be understood without following the military
path to its logical conclusion, as Erickson does and as a host of writers in the
Armenian information and propaganda network do not. There is consistency
in the Erickson approach and complete inconsistency in the alternative. There
is no evidence to back up Taner Akams claim that key decisions concerning
the massacre were very likely to have been made within the CUP (Committee
of Union and Progress) government in March, 1915. Within three pages these
key decisions slide into the decision for genocide.17 Akams suppositions
and conjecture amount to no more than a conspiracy theory and the praise for
his work as brilliant and definitive and meticulous is ludicrous.18 The
inability of peer and general reviewers to see the holes in his work and hold
him to account and the referral by other historians to his conclusions as if they
were fact19 underscores the whole shabby state of scholarship on this issue in
the western cultural mainstream.
The actions taken by the Ottoman government in the spring of 1915 are
consistent with the view that the sole intention in ordering the relocation was
to deprive the Armenian insurgents of civilian support. As reports flowed in of
attacks on Armenian convoys, orders were sent out to provincial officials given
the task organizing the relocation to catch the perpetrators and provide the
convoys with more effective protection. The government finally set up an
investigative council involving the ministries of justice, interior and war, with
the finance ministry instructed to fund its activities. Three commissions of
inquiry were sent out across the eastern provinces with the authority to
investigate the conduct of jandarma, police and civil servants, including senior
administrators. Hearings were held across the eastern provinces, resulting in

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16

Erickson, p.214

17

Taner Akam, A Shameful Act. The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility (London:
Constable, 2007), pp.162-164

18

See the praise on the front cover of the book by Orhan Pamuk and on the back by the late Christopher Hitchens.

19

See Alan Kramer, Dynamic of Destruction. Culture and Mass Killing in the First World War (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2007. Professor Kramers completely twisted version of events (pp.147-150) reaches its pinnacle
with the repetition of Akams claim of a March meeting.

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The Armenian Relocation: The Case For Military Necessity

the court-martial of 1673 people for unlawful conduct during the relocation.
Of this number 528 were from the police, the military or the special intelligence
organization (the Tekilat) and 170 were public servants, including tax
collectors, mayors and officials directly responsible for arranging the
relocation.
The remainder were ordinary people or members of bandit gangs which had
taken part in acts of plunder and murder. Of the number put on trial, 67 were
sentenced to death (with uncertainty as to whether the sentences were carried
out) and 524 sentenced to prison terms of varying lengths of time. The charges
against others were dismissed because they were minors.20 These trials were
far more important than the charges heard in the kangaroo court set up by the
British during their occupation of Istanbul, to which Taner Akam gives such
importance. The suspect source material he utilizes includes what he says are
handwritten copies of court proceedings held in the Armenian patriarchate in
Jerusalem.21 There is no proof, however, that they are copies of the originals
and no indication of who wrote them or when they were written.
The Armenians suffered terribly and great crimes were committed against
them. There might be disagreement about numbers and detail but there is no
dispute about the core accusation of criminality and mistreatment. The Ottoman
government has to be held responsible for the consequences of the decision it
took, even if it did not realize what those consequences would be. This, of
course, is a key issue: it certainly must have known that it was going to be very
difficult to move such a large number of people at a time of war, at such short
notice, but did it realize just how difficult?
Here the factors leading up to catastrophe that must be taken into account
include the lack of manpower to adequately protect the Armenians; logistical
problems involved in shifting large numbers of people across a region hardly
touched by modern development; the incompetence of provincial authorities
even allowing for the enormity of the task they had been assigned; shortages
of food and medicine because all resources were being channeled to the front;
revenge by Kurdish and Arab tribes for the killing of Muslims by Armenian
bands; the effects on civilian life of the British naval blockade of the east
Mediterranean coast, with all Syrians suffering as well as the relocated
Armenians; and the locust plague of summer 1915 which devastated crops and
worsened an increasingly desperate food situation. Even in towns and relatively
well watered and fertile regions of Syria, civilians were dropping dead in the
streets from starvation. It is doubtful whether the Ottoman government could
have known or predicted all this in advance.
20

Yusuf Sarinay, The Relocations (Tehcir) of Armenians and the Trials of 1915-16, Middle East Critique, vol.20, no.3,
Fall 2011: pp. 299-315.

21

Akam, p.xiii

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Assoc. Prof. Dr. Jeremy Salt

This seems to have been a zero sum game. There was going to be loss
whatever the government decided, but in the view of the military, the bulk
of the civilian Armenian population had to be moved if the insurgency was
to be quashed. The failure to suppress the insurgents would threaten not just
the war effort but the survival of the empire itself. That was the view of the
military command. Hindsight is a wonderful thing but it was the judgment
formed by military men in the heat of a fight to the death being waged on
several fronts by armies and from behind the lines by thousands of
insurgents.
The other side of this coin is the terrible
suffering of the Muslim population, especially
There was going to be loss
during the Russian-Armenian occupation of
whatever the government
northeastern Anatolia. About 500,000 Ottoman
decided, but in the view of
civilian Muslims were massacred during the
the military, the bulk of
course of the war. The atrocities committed by
the civilian Armenian
Armenians were recorded in Ottoman
population had to be
documents written not for propaganda
moved if the insurgency
purposes, like the 1916 Blue Book of James
was to be quashed. The
failure to suppress the
Bryce and Arnold Toynbee, but for the
insurgents would threaten
information of the central government when
not just the war effort but
Ottoman armies were able to return to the
the survival of the empire
occupied eastern provinces. The suffering of
itself. That was the view
one group does not cancel out nor should it be
of the military command.
allowed to minimize the suffering of another
but the suffering of all surely has to be taken
into account if a balanced account of this terrible period of history is to be
written. There were not perpetrators on one side and victims on the other in
this conflict: there were perpetrators and victims on all sides. Somewhere
between two and 2.5 million Ottoman Muslim civilians died in this war from
exactly the same causes as Armenians, massacre, combat, disease, malnutrition
and exposure. They are the invisible element in this history.
Edward Erickson has done a fine job in hacking a path through the jungle of
propaganda in which the Armenian question has been buried for the past
century. Drawing on Ottoman military sources he makes a powerful case for
the view that the relocation of the Armenians was dictated by military
necessity and nothing else.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY
Akarca, H. D. (2002, February). The Russian Administration of the Occupied
Ottoman Territories During the First World War 1915-1917, (Unpublished
MA Thesis), Department of International Relations, Bilkent University.
Akam, T. (2007). A Shameful Act. The Armenian Genocide and the Question
of Turkish Responsibility. London: Constable.
Erickson, Edward J. (2013). Ottomans and Armenians. A Study in
Counterinsurgency, New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Kramer, A. (2007). Dynamic of Destruction. Culture and Mass Killing in the
First World War Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Reynolds, Michael A. (2011). Shattering Empires. The Clash and Collapse of
the Ottoman and Russian Empires 1908-1918. New York: Cambridge
University Press.
Sarinay, Y. (2011, Fall). The Relocations (Tehcir) of Armenians and the Trials
of 1915-16, Middle East Critique, Vol. 20, No: 3.

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