The Losses of Armenians in 1890-1938 – The Deadly “Bacilli” Are Still Alive

Armenians, Greeks, Yezidis, and Assyrians remained under the ruins of the Ottoman Empire. Our people suffered the greatest losses and lost their native land. From 1890 to 1923, the casualties of the Armenian people reached three million three hundred thousand.

In the mentioned period, we had three Catholicosates (Etchmiadzin, Cilicia, Akhtamar), three patriarchies (Constantinople, Jerusalem, Armenian Catholic Patriarchy), three national parties (Armenakans, Hunchaks, Dashnaks), young people who graduated from the best educational institutions, and the best intelligentsia.

We had high-ranking government officials and well-known diplomats serving in various countries, as well as the richest oil owners and national capital concentrated in Constantinople, Izmir, Baku, Tiflis, and other cities.

There was a political thought, but there was no state thinking or a unity of the healthy forces of the nation. Therefore, it was not possible to create a single political center, a serious socio-political leadership. Thus, the educated and devoted figures of the nation pursued the ongoing events, stumbling and puffing.

Not realizing that the people’s right to exist cannot be secured only by force of arms and victories won on the battlefield, they lost in politics. What was called national values had long been distorted and turned into adaptability, extreme ignorance, and other harmful evils.

Those who could not adapt to the reality and tried to change something were, at best, rejected or ignored by the blind and slavish majority.

According to the overwhelming majority and those who considered themselves leaders of the nation, foreign insidious forces were the main causes of the national tragedy. The whole world was against us, and without the Russians, we would have disappeared, while the war with the Turks was (and is) our holy mission.

And while our neighbors tried to get out of each trial with the least loss for themselves and even with benefits, we without thinking threw ourselves into the flame. And it turned out that our fight was against us, for the interests of others. We were used and were to be thrown into the dustbin of history.

Our part of the guilt and responsibility in the tragedy of the people is horribly great and has not been fully investigated. And we are still the carriers of the bacilli of the same deadly disease and are in the same pernicious movement.

Casualties of Armenian people in 1890-1938 in the Ottoman Empire, Atrpatakan, Transcaucasia, and then in the Turkish Republic as a result of the genocide carried out by the Turks.

• 1890 (the peak fell on 1894-1896). 300 thousand killed, about 100 thousand forcibly converted to Islam.
• 1897-1914. At least 60 thousand killed, about 10 thousand forcibly converted to Islam.
• 1915. About one and a half million dead, 300 thousand forcibly converted to Islam.
• 1916-1918. 500 thousand killed or taken by starvation and disease.
• 1918-1929. 300 thousand killed (of which 30 thousand in Baku, 50-70 thousand in various regions of Azerbaijan). In the same years, 350 thousand died of starvation and epidemics.
• November 1920 – March 1921 (only in Shirak Province of the Alexandropol Governorate) 60 thousand killed.
• 1921-1923. 100 thousand killed (Cilicia, Izmir, and surrounding areas).
• 1924-1936. At least 50 thousand Islamized Armenians,
• 1937-1938. Up to 90 thousand killed in Dersim (the exact number is not known).

Thus, in 1890-1938, the Armenians lost more than three and a half million people, or 70% of the total number of all Armenians.

Arshaluis Zurabyan