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The Armenian Population of the Ottoman Empire has been the subject of considerably more estimates and debates than the populatoin of any other Ottoman millet. During the late nineteenth century, various Europeans provided population figures on Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. The Armenians later provided their own figures, as did the Ottomans. Professional historians, politicians, and propagandists have used the various estimates of Armenian population to buttress moral and political arguments, each side often taking figures that best fit its argument. Little has been done, however, to evaluate logically and statistically the material on Armenian population.
Armenian groups and individuals had been furnishing estimates of Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire since the 1880s, but their most important and detailed figures were presented immediately after World War I. These figures were intended to convince the delegates to the Versailles Peace Conference, and world opinion, that before World War I there had been more Armenians than Turks in the Armenian areas of eastern Anatolia, and that there was in 1919 a large enough population of Armenians to create a stable Armenian state. Armenian sources always recognized that, through death and migration, the Armenian population of eastern Anatolia had become very small. They asserted, however, that to apply the principle of self-determination to the population as it was in 1919 would be to reward the Turks for what they stated were the Turks' evil deeds during the war. They further asserted that peace and a high Armenian birth rate would soon increase Armenian numbers.
Though various estimates were offered, the population data that was at the heart of the Armenian claims was drawn from statistics supplied by the Armenian Patriarchate, as they had appeared in a prewar book by Marcel Leart (Krikor Zohrap), "La Queston Armenienne a la Lumiere des Documents."
The statistics supplied by the Armenian Patriarchate were avowedly baed on records of baptisms and deaths kept by ecclesiastical officials. Registration was founded on the canonical need for Armenians to be baptized, married within the Church, and to have a religious funeral. Moreover, it was stated that the Patriarch kept records that were used to impose an ecclesiastical tax and that were used to fix the number of deputies from each district to the Armenian political and religious assemblies.
The Patriarchate statistics gave figures for the years 1882 and 1912. For 1912, the Armenian population of the "Six Vilayets" (Erzurum, Van, Bitlis, Mamuretulaziz or Kharpout, Diyarbakir, and Sivas) was given by province, accompanied by estimates of the populations of the other groups. The figures were not based on the Ottoman provincial boundaries. Instead, the Patriarchate figures were "A l'exclusion des parties de ces provinces ou les Armeniens ne sont pas en nombre." The excluded areas were: "Hekkiari dans le vilayet de Van; Le Sud de Sighert dans le vilayet de Bitlis; Le Sud du vilayet de Diarbekir; Le Sud de Malatia dans le vilayet de Kharpout; Le Nord-Ouest et l'Ouest du vilayet de Sivas. Le nombre des Armeniens qui habitent ces parties est de 145,000."
The Patriarchate did not give detailed population statistics for areas outside of the six vilayets, nor did it present data on other groups of the population for those areas.
The Armenian Patriarchate figures were summary statistics. Problems arising in their analysis are many, some of them insoluble. Since no major Armenian populatoin survived in Anatolia at the time of the modern Turkish Republican censuses it is impossible to compare the Patriarch's data to more modern material. No age or sex breakdowns were presented in the Patriarchate tables, so it is impossible to analyze the figures demographically. In fact there is no competely satisfactory way to evaluate the Armenian Patriarchate materials on Armenian population. It is possible, however, to evaluate the data given for Muslim population in the same tables. Doing so sheds some light on the accuracy of the Armenian statistics.
It can be easily demonstrated that the Patriarchate figures for Muslim population are extremely low: [for 1912, they are for Erzurum 345,000; for Van 122,000; for Bitlis 127,000; for Mamuretulaziz 197,000; for Diyarbakir 100,000; for Sivas 287,000] This contrasts with their figures for Armenians of 2,100,000.
Ottoman figures for Sivas's Muslim population in that year are 1,112,270.
Patriarchate figures for other eastern provinces were low, as well. It is impossible to know whether the Patriarchate figures on Muslim poulation were intentinally or unintentionally incorrect. The Armenian ecclesiastical authorities had no way themselves to count the Muslim population and they refused to accept Ottoman figures. Most likely, they simply guessed. The diminution of Muslim population may have been conscious or unconscious, although it was the case of course that the undercount of Muslims met the political aims of those who desired Armenian independence.
The figures of the Armenian Patriarchate were presented to the Versailles Peace Conference along with other statistics on the populations of Armenians in Russian Transcaucasia and Ottoman Cilicia. In each case, the population estimates presented by the Armenian delegates was considerably at variance with populations as recorded in the censuses and registration records of the respective governments.
The difficulties with the statistics provided by the Armenian Patriarchate can be summarized as follows:
1. The form of the Armenian Patriarchate statistics naturally leads to questions as to how they were created. Statistics of any actual population count or enumeration are usually listed in odd numbers, not rounded to the nearest 100,000. The Patriarchate statistics are in the form of an answer to the question "Approximately how many Armenians would you say were in the eastern vilayets," not in the form of a compilation of baptismal records.
2. NO examples of detailed Armenian parish records have ever come to light. The only detailed person-by-person records of Ottoman minority population ever seen and reported are in the Ottoman archives. Nor hve specific rules from the Patriarchate for the collection of baptismal, marriage, and death records in Istanbul been discovered. It is doubtful that the Ottomans, suspicious as they were of Armenian community action and publicity, would have allowed the type of massive collection and checking of data necessary for such records.
3. No detailed breakdowns of the Armenian population were presented by the Patriarchate. Statistics by sancak, kaza, and village could have been anlyzed for correctness, as could data subdivided in other ways -- for example, year of baptism -- but they were never published.
4. The Patriarchate figures were obviously in great error on points other than the 1912 Armenian population. For example, they listed some provinces' Muslim populations as only 25% of the real totals and much overstated the 1882 Armenian population.
5. No official from the Armenian Patriarchate every wrote commentary on the statistics or on how they were collected and compiled. We have only non-Patriarchal sources that infer the completeness of the Patriarch's knowledge. The only population statistics actually attributable to an Armenian Patriarch were published by the ex-Patriarch Malachia Ormanian in an appendix to his book on the Armenian church. He made no statement concerning baptismal records and gave no indication that his figures, often widely at variance with the 1912 "Patriarchate Statistics," were anything but estimates.
The Ottoman government kept statistics of the Armenian population as part of its regular registration system and as taxation records for the military exemption tax, that Armenians paid in lieu of military service. These statistics were made public in the usual way, through the "censuses" and the salnames. In addition, Ottoman palace departments and government ministries also kept summary statements on Armenian population, as a matter of political interest. In the post-1878 period, Armenian nationalism had become an external and internal political threat to the Ottomans. Since population information was a basis for understanding the Armenian situation in the Empire, Abdulhamid's government, known for its intelligence system, kept what it thought to be up-to-date population estimates on the Armenians, or at least attempted to do so.
Published Ottoman population statements on Christian minorities have been strongly criticized by both Europeans and Armenians. At the end of World War I, those in favor of an independent Armenia felt that:
"No scientific census has ever been taken by the government of the Turks and no reliable statistics on anything has ever been prepared by the Turks. The Turkish government has always falsified statistics, with the deliberate purpose of presenting the Armenians as only an insignificant minority in Armenia."
Those who espoused the cause of Armenian independence saw the issue of population size as one of primary importance. They did not accept Ottoman population statements, which they believed to be deliberate falsifications of minority populations. They argued that the Ottomans:
1. Deliberately gerrymandered provincial boundaries so that Armenian population centers would be divided among many provinces, each of which had a Muslim majority.
2. Introduced nonindigenous elements, especially Circassians and Kurds, into Armenian lands, so as to swell the Muslim population.
3. Grouped all Muslims together in population reports, regardless of language, ethnic or sectarian ties (e.g. Turks, Circassians, Yezidis, Kurds), while separating Christians by sect.
4. Overcounted Muslims in official statistics.
5. Undercounted Christians.
These issues are best considered separately.
1. The Ottomans unquestionably did reorganize the traditional province (eyalet) of Erzurum, a major center of Armenian population, into a number of smaller provinces, ostensibly as part of the reform and reorganization of provincial governments that came with the Vilayet Law of 1876. Whether or not the Ottoman government, or individual members of the government, intended to divide up the Armenians by doing so is impossible to answer without documentary evidence, none of which has so far appeared. There is evidence that drawing provincial boundaries in order to minimize the proportion of Armenian population was not a consistent Ottoman policy, if it ever was a policy. If the Ottomans had intended to lower the proportions of Armenians in provinces, why would they, at the same time they divided up Erzurum Eyaleti, have detached Hakkari, which was more than 80% Muslim, from Van Vilayeti, thus greatly increasing the concentration of Christians in Van? The primary purpose of the division of Erzurum and other eyalets into smaller vilayets seems actually to have been administrative efficiency.
2. After the 1877-8 war and earlier wars with Russia, migrants from provinces lost to Russia did migrate to Ottoman territories, and migrants were indeed settled in areas inhabited by Armenians. The Ottomans settled immigrants in all areas of the Empire, as they had been doing since the Crimean War. The Armenian area was not itself singled out for colonization. It should also be said, however, that the dynamics of the post-1878 migration in the east did change the balance of Muslims and Christians in the remaining eastern Anatolian provinces. This was not a result of official resettlement, of which there was little in the east, but of Muslims leaving areas newly conquered by Russia for continguous Ottoman areas and Armenians leaving Ottoman areas for the Russian Empire. THe Ottoman government undoubtedly fostered Muslim in-migration, seeing it as a way to cement its control in the east by increasing the Muslim population and by keeping an embittered anti-Russian element on the border, where they could be counted on to resist Russian advances.
3. The Ottomans did group all Muslims together and separate Christians by sect in most, not all, of their population statistics. This was a result of the millet system and of the theological reluctance to accept differences among Muslims. Though the refusal to divide Muslims by sect and language group did make them appear statistically as a block, this was not done for a nineteenth-century political motive. It was a continuing feature of Ottoman population registration from the fifteenth to the early twentieth centuries.
4. The alleged overcounting of Muslims has been discussed in detail in preceding chapters. The Ottomans actually undercounted, not overcounted, the Muslim population by undercounting Muslim women and children.
5. The final point, undercounting of Armenians, will be considered below in depth. The Ottomans did indeed undercount Armenians, though not to the degree claimed by some critics. In most cases their undercount was part of the same undercounting that affe ted all segments of the population -- undercounting of women and children.
One of the main tests of the intended accuracy of population enumerations is consistency. If the Ottoman central government had intended to misrepresent non-Muslim population in its printed records, the records might be expected to have changed dramatically as relations with particular millets changed. That this did not happen with the Greek Orthodox millet is demonstrated below. We will see here that it did not take place with records of the Armenian millet, either.
If they had misrepresented Armenian population intentionally, one would expect to see the numbers of Armenians reported by the Ottomans decreasing as the Ottoman government reacted to increasing claims to Armenian independence or autonomy. The Ottomans would theoretically have attempted to decrease the recorded number of Armenians, in order to demonstrate that there were too few Armenians to create a state. In fact, the opposite took place.
The province of Trabzon provides an example of Ottoman minority registration practices because it was a province in which a significant number of Armenians resided and the only "Armenian" province that had very good statistical reporting. Most of the provinces with a significant Armenian population were in areas in which Ottoman central control was weak and poulation records much poorer than those of Trabzon. The following figures present the Gregorian (or Apostolic) Armenian population of Trabzon as it was listed in the Ottoman salnames and as in the 1918 census. [1869-70 -- 32,798; 1870-71 -- 35,784; 1871-72 - - 35,510; 1878-79 -- 38,958; 1887-88 -- 40,887; 1893-94 -- 41,849; 1895-96 -- 42,349; 1900-01 -- 49,535; 1902-303 -- 50,678; 1903-04 -- 51,639; 1905-06 -- 51,483; 1918 - - 64,607]. The period was one of gradual, and sometimes rapid, deterioration of Ottoman- Armenian relations, yet the Ottoman statistics show a large and steady rise in the Armenian population. In fact, the 1918 census population, the data for which was collected in 1912, shows that the Ottomans had upgraded their figures and actually recorded more Armenians at a time when relations were bad and published them when relations were abysmal. The Ottoman statistics would seem to have been printed, if in anyone's aid, in aid of the cause of the Armenians. It is hard to believe that the Ottomans would publish such statistics unless they thought them to be accurate representations of the population and thus valuable to the state, no matter what they said about Armenian numbers.
Ottoman records for other provinces are more or less consistent and precise than Trabzon's, as was the case as well with records of the Muslim population. Only in Van Vilayeti and part of Bitlis Vilayeti were records of Armenians much more poorly kept than those of Muslims. The important point is that there was no wish of the Ottoman government to publish anything but what they considered to be accurate figures on Armenian population.
The one most important factor concerning Ottoman population statistics of minorities was they they were kept as part of an ongoing government intelligence program, not made for polemic use. It was in the interest of the Ottoman state to provide itself with the most accurate statistics possible. While it may have happened that Ottoman officials in some eastern areas, particularly in Van VIlayeti, may have changed population statistics to fit what they believed their masters in Istanbul wanted to see, it is unlikely that the Ottoman government wanted deliberately to deceive itself. The Ottoman government might rather have been expected to have done all it could to know exactly how many Armenians there were in the Empire, where they lived, and what they were doing, even if the information was kept secret. This is exactly what the Ottomans did. Failures in statistical collection and compilation seem not deliberate, but were the result of untrained officials and of all the problems of counting population in any underdeveloped area. The problems were compounded by the fact that much of the Armenian population lived in areas of the Empire in which Ottoman governmental control was weak.
It may be posited that the central Ottoman government might have deliberately published false statistics on the Armenian population, deliberate undercounts, in order to deceive the world, but it is highly unlikely that the Ottomans would have deliberately fooled themselves. The following figures are from an archival source that was part of the Ottoman Archives' Yildiz Collection, i.e., an unofficial working paper from the palace archives of Abdulhamid II's government. By all evidence (e.g., sloppy handwriting, smudges, crossed-out sections, and corrections of addition errors) this document was not intended to go beyond the offices of the government. It is simply a list of provincial populations from the registers, as copied and used by an unknown official, and undoubtedly not checked or compiled as accurately as a table intended for publication would have been.
Armenian Population of the "Six Vilayets" in Archival [1882] and Published [1892] Records: Erzurum [Archival--101,119; Published--120,147]; Bitlis [Archival--101,358; Published-- 108,050]; Diyarbakir [Archival--45,291; Published--60,281]; Sivas [Archival--112,649; Published--129,085]; Mamuretulaziz [Archival--73,178; Published--83,394]; Van [Archival- -71,582; Published--55,051]. These two sets of figures are remarkably close and their yearly rates of increase are reasonably within the expected range.
Closeness between archival sources only intended for governmental use and published statistics does not prove that the published statements wee correct, but it does greatly diminish the possibility of the type of deliberate deceptino of which the Ottomans were accused.
European estimates for the population of the Ottoman Armenian community were numerous and often at variance with one another. Some Europeans based their figures on Ottoman population registers, some on the reports of European consuls or personal estimates, and some on reports from members and officials of the Armenian millet. The following figures were provided by such authors:
Ludovic de Contenson, 1913 -- 1,150,000 in Asiatic Turkey, 250,000 in European Turkey; Selonoy, early 20th century -- 726,750 in the "Nine Vilayets"; Vambery, 1896 -- 1,131,125 in the "Nine Vilayets"; Trotter, early century -- 780,750 in the "Nine Vilayets"; Jakmen, same period -- 1,330,000 in the "Nine Vilayets"; Cuinet, same -- 838,125 in the "Nine Vilayets"; Zelenof, same -- 921,000 in the "Nine Vilayets"; Lynch, same, 1,058,484 in the "Nine Vilayets".
The question of Armenian numbers became particularly important to European governments after World War I, when the Allies were attempting to divide Anatolia along ethnic lines. The difficulties of the governments in estimating population at that time demonstrate that European authorities had no idea where to turn for accurate population informatin. European "experts" disagreed among themselves and adopted widely varying estimates of the minority and Muslim populations of the Ottoman Empire, often depending on Armenian, Turkish, Greek and even Kurdish sources. It is clear that no one at the Versailles Peace Conference had any clear idea what the Ottoman poulation was or had been.
Much effort could be made and much space devoted here to analyses of European estimates of the Armenian population. It would all be futiel. What was established in chapter 1 for Muslim populatin is true here for Armenian population, as well -- ony those who were in a position to actually count and record the population could have given an accurate estimate of population numbers. European analysts simply had no way to count the population.