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1.The Concurrent Resolution states that 1.5 million Armenians died between 1915 and 1923 at the hands of the Turks. This figure needs to be questioned because: (a) it seems grossly exaggerated; (b) it constitutes the basis of other claim which has come to be wrongly called "Armenian genocide."
2.How did the Armenians determine that 1.5 million of their race were killed? At the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 the head of their delegation set figure of Armenian losses at 300,000. Then, in the twenties and thirties, after the publication of the "Andonian forgeries", this figure crept up to 800,000, and following World War II it oscillated between 1,000,000 and 2,000,000. By 1989, 1.5 million seems to have become the officially sanctioned number. It is the reliability of this figure that needs to be questioned--first, by reviewing population statistics.
3.However difficult it may be to establish correct population statistics for an area in war
time, especially when there were so many refugees--and so many who never returned
to their homes--it is possible to arrive at some valid approximations by examing the
available demographic studies. Such studies were made both by the French and the
English before World War I began. the Ottoman census of 1914 was also completed
before the Empire entered the war. Thanks to these studies we have the following
figures which give an idea of the size of the Ottoman Armenian population:
The French Yellow Book1,555,000
Encyclopedia Britannica1,500,000
Cotenson (French demographer)1,400,000
Lynch (English demographer)1,345,000
Annual Register (London) 1,056,000
As can be seen the statistical variance between the highest and the lowest figures is
small, namely 499,000 (1,555,000 - 1,056,000 = 499,000). If we take the median
(499,000 : 2 = 249,500) and add it to the lowest estimate, we get 1,305,500 for the
size of the Armenian population. (249,500 + 1,056,000 = 1,305,500). This is almost
identical with the Ottoman census,* and with the figure that the American historian
Stanford Shaw arrived at--1,294,000--in 1976. Thus because of the smallness of the
variance between these estimates calculated by neutral, sometimes anti-Turkish,
scholars we can feel justified in saying that there were about 1,305,000 (in rounded
figures) Armenians in the Ottoman Empire in 1914. This permits us to draw a first
conclusion: given that one cannot kill more people than exist, the Armenians' favorite
estimate of 1.5 million "genocided" does not make sense.
4.But now, let us try to figure how many Armenians might actually have died in the
inter-communal war? The figures given at the time are as follows:
We must start by admitting that these estimates are mostly guesswork, for there was no way of obtaining correct figures during, or so soon after, the war. In order to arrive at a more dependable figure we need to make some calculations.
5.At the Paris Peace Conference Boghos Nubar and his Armenian Delegation claimed that 280,000 of his people remained in the Ottoman Empire, while 700,000 emigrated. If these figures are correct, then we must conclude that out of a population of 1,305,000 Armenians, 325,000 died during the inter-communal war. (1,305,000-280,000 - 700,000 = 325,000).
6.But this low figure is not supported by recent findings which indicate that no more than 80,000 Armenians (not 280,000) had remained in Turkey right after the war. This raises a question which is: Why did the Armenians claim that so many of their people stayed on in a country they had come to hate? One answer might be that 280,000 was simply a bad guess. Another possible answer is that the frontiers of North Eastern Turkey had not been finally determined in 1919, when the figure 280,000 was given, and many Armenians who soon thereafter went to what became the Armenian Soviet Republic were included in the figure. A third answer is that Armenians tended to inflate the numbers of their people remaining in Anatolia, because this gave them a better claim to a part of it during the peace negotiations.
7.Whatever the reason for the initial claim, we must change our earlier calculation and base it on the 80,000 figure. And if we say 80,000 remained and 700,000 emigrated we would have to conclude that between 500,000 to 600,000 might have died during the events of 1915-1923. (1,305,000 - 80,000 - 700,000 = 525,000.) Thus it was not 325,000 Armenians who lost their lives, but 525,000, or, taking into account possible errors in estimation, 600,000. Although in terms of human lives this is considerably more tragic than earlier determinations, the recent Turkish Governments have accepted the estimate. But even this figure is still very far from the 1.5 million victims that the Armenians, and the Concurrent Resolution claim.
8.The Turkish-Muslim* losses during the same period are more difficult to calculate, in the sense that the Ottoman Empire having lost World War I nobody on the winning side was very interested in trying to determine the casualties it had sustained. Consequently, we have to proceed by way of a comparison of the general census taken in Anatolia in 1914, and the other general census that the Turkish Republic completed in 1923-24-- that is after the Treaty of Lausanne had settled the frontiers of the new nation state. These censuses show that the Turkish-Muslim population diminished by 2.5 million between 1914 and 1923--not counting "military" losses of the Ottoman armies, for which quite good data exist. And, given that during World War I there were no hostilities in Anatolia, except in the Eastern part of it where the inter-communal conflict between Ottomans and Armenians took place, we must conclude that most of the Turkish-Muslim loss of life occurred during that conflict.
9.This amounts to saying that in the course of the events which darken the period under review Armenians lost between 525,000 to 600,000 people, and the Turks and other Muslims in Eastern Anatolia lost, say between 2 and 2.5 million.
*The official Ottoman census for 1914 estimates the Armenian population in the Empire to be 1,295,000. I have not introduced it in the above list, so as not to be accused of bias.
*The Ottoman Empire being multi-ethnic the expression "Turkish-Muslim" should be understood to include Turks, Kurds, and Transcaucasian peoples holding Ottoman citizenship.