Dzargon – Genosida Armenia adalah sebuah pembataain sistematik terhadap 1 juta lebih etnis Amernia yang terjadi di Dataran Tinggi Armenia, Anatolia dan beberapa wilayah kekuasaan Ottoman Empire. Pembanatian ini terjadi selama Perang Dunia I dan dilakukan oleh Kekaisaran Turki Ottoman dan Parati Penguasa di zamannya.

Pembunuhan massal orang-orang Armenia dilakukan selama proses invasi yang dilakukan oleh Turki Ottoman (Turki Utsmaniyah) ke wilayah Rusia dan Persia (Iran). Pembunuhan paling banyak dilakukan setelah kekalahan Turki Ottoman di perang Sarikamish pada Januari 1915. Suku Armenia dijadikan kambing hitam atas kekalahan tersebut karena pengehiatan mereka.

Pemerintah Kekaisaran Turki Utsmaniyah mendapatkan laporan bahwa etnis-etnis Armenia melakukan pemberontakan meskipun bukti-bukti yang menunjukkan pemberontakan tersebut kurang namun Turki Ottoman tetap mengeksekusi suku-suku Armenia.

Deportasi massal suku Armenia dari Dataran Tinggi Armenia dan Anatolia kemudian dianggap menjadi solusi dari pemberontakan yang mereka lakukan. Hal ini untuk mencegah upaya kemerdekaan di daerah-daerah yang banyak etnis Armenia. Tentara-tentara Armenia yang tergabung dalam terntara Ottoman kemudian dilucuti senjatanya lalu dibunuh sesuai dengan pentiah Feberuari 1915. 24 April 1915, Otoritas Ottoman menangkan dan mendeportasi kelompok intelektual dan pemimpin-pempimpin komunitas Armenia dari Konstatinople (Instanbul)

Atas dasar perintah Talat Pasha, sekitar 1,2 juta suku Armenia yang terdiri dari wanita, anak-anak, orang tua dan orang renta lemah yang dianggap sudah tidak bisa mengangkat senjata dipaksa berjalan dari Anatolia ke gurun Siria dalam rentang tahun 1915 sampai 1916. Barisan deportasi massal ini dikawal oleh Militer namun tidak diberi perlindungan, air dan makana. Rombongan ini sangat rentang terdapap penyakit, perampokan dan pemerkosaan. Tidak sampai setengah dari mereka yang tiba dalam keadaan hidup di Gurun Siria.

Setibanya di Gurun Siria, Pengungsian terbagi ke dalam beberapa kamp konsentrasi. Pada awal tahun 1916, pengungsian yang masih hidup sekitar 200 ribuan. Setengah dari pengungsian dipaksan masuk Islam dan digabungkan ke rumah-rumah muslim. Sisanya baik di Camp Pengungsian dan di daerah-daerah lain yang tidak ikut di deportasi, mereka dibantai oleh gerakan Nasionalis Turki Ottoman selaman perang Dunia I.

Genosida Armenia telah merubah paksan tatanan hidup dari kebudayaan Armenia yang sudah ada selama 2.000 tahun di Asia Kecil di bagian timur. Pada tahun 2013, 30 negara telah mengakui deportasi tersebut adalah bentuk dari Genosida Turki Ottoman. Akan tetapi dunia Akademisi Turki tidak pernah menerima tindakan deportasi tersebut adalah bentuk Genosida atau tindakan kekerasan.

Posisi Bangsa Armenia

Bangsa Armenia telah hadir dan berkembang di Anatolia sekitar abad ke 6 sebelum masehi. 1 Abad sebelum Turki datang menginvasi Anatolia, bangsa Armenia sudah membangun kerajaan dan secara resmi menganut agama Kristen Ortodoks pada abad ke 4. Salah satu tanda agama ini resmi di kerajaan Armenia dengan pembangunan Gereja Apolistik Armenia.

Setelah kejatuhan Kekaisaran Byzantium pada tahun 1453 di tangan Sultan Mehmed II dari Turki, dua kerajaan islam memperebutkan Armenia yakni Turki Ustmani dan Kekaisaran Safavid Iran. Perjanjian Zuhab pada tahun 1639 antara Ottoman dan Safavid secara resmi memisahkan Armenia Timur dan Armenia Barat.

Sharia law encoded Islamic supremacy but guaranteed property rights and freedom of worship to non-Muslims (dhimmis) in exchange for a special tax,[9] but they were also pejoratively referred to in Ottoman Turkish as gavurs, a word connoting that they were “disloyal, avaricious, and not to be trusted”.[10] Most Armenians were grouped together into a semi-autonomous community (millet), led by the Armenian Patriarch of Constantinople.[11] The millet system institutionalized the inferiority of non-Muslims, but granted the Armenians significant autonomy.[12]

Around two million Armenians lived in the Ottoman Empire on the eve of World War I.[13] According to the Armenian Patriarchate’s 1913–1914 estimates, there were 2,925 Armenian towns and villages in the empire, of which 2,084 were in the Armenian Highlands in the vilayetss of Bitlis, Diyarbekir, Erzerum, Harput, and Van. Hundreds of thousands of Armenians lived elsewhere, scattered throughout central and western Asia Minor. The Armenian population was mostly rural, especially in the Armenian Highlands, where 90 percent were peasant farmers.[14] Armenians were a minority in most parts of the empire, living alongside their Turkish, Kurdish, and Greek Orthodox neighbors.[13][14] According to the Patriarchate’s figure, 215,131 Armenians lived in urban areas, especially Constantinople, Smyrna, and Eastern Thrace.[14] In the nineteenth century, a few urban Armenians became extremely wealthy through their connections to Europe as the Greek War of Independence raised doubt over the loyalty of Greek Orthodox subjects.[15]
KOneflik dan Perjuangan Bangsa Armenia
Armenians in the eastern provinces lived in semi-feudal conditions and commonly encountered forced labor, illegal taxation, and unpunished crimes including robberies, murders, and sexual assaults.[16][17] Until 1908, non-Muslims in the empire were forbidden to carry arms, leaving them unable to defend themselves.[18] In the mid-nineteenth century, the Ottoman government instituted the Tanzimat, a series of reforms to equalize the status of Ottoman subjects regardless of confession, a goal strongly opposed by Islamic clergy and Muslims in general.[19][20] The Tanzimat failed to improve the condition of Armenian peasantry in the eastern provinces, which regressed from 1860 onwards.[21] The Ottoman Land Code of 1858 disadvantaged Armenians and many now had to pay double taxation both to Kurdish landlords and the Ottoman government.[22]

From the mid-nineteenth century, Armenians faced large-scale land usurpation as a consequence of the sedentarization of Kurdish tribes and the arrival of Muslim refugees and immigrants (mainly Circassians).[23][24][25] In 1876, when Abdul Hamid II came to power, the state began to confiscate Armenian-owned land in the eastern provinces and give it to Muslim immigrants, as part of a systematic policy to reduce the Armenian population of these areas.[26] These conditions led to a substantial decline in the Armenian Highlands’ population; 300,000 Armenians emigrated in the decades leading up to World War I, while others moved to towns.[27][28] To achieve improved conditions, a few Armenians joined revolutionary political parties, of which the most influential was the Dashnaktsutyun (Armenian Revolutionary Federation), founded in 1890.[29]

Abdul Hamid suspended the 1876 Constitution of the Ottoman Empire the following year after parliamentarians criticized his handling of the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878.[30] Russia’s decisive victory forced the Ottoman Empire to cede parts of eastern Asia Minor, the Balkans, and Cyprus.[31] At the 1878 Congress of Berlin, the Sublime Porte (Ottoman government) agreed to carry out reforms and guarantee the physical safety of its Armenian subjects, but there was no enforcement mechanism;[32] conditions continued to worsen.[33] This marked the emergence of the Armenian Question in international diplomacy as Armenians were for the first time used to interfere in Ottoman politics.[34] Although Armenians had been called the “loyal millet” in contrast to Greeks and others who had previously challenged Ottoman rule, after 1878 Armenians became perceived as subversive and ungrateful.[35]

In 1891, Abdul Hamid created the Hamidiye regiments from Kurdish tribes, allowing them to act with impunity against Armenians.[36][33] From 1895 to 1896 the empire saw widespread massacres; at least 100,000 Armenians were killed[37][38] by Ottoman soldiers, crowds incited to violence, and Kurdish tribes.[39] Many Armenian villages were forcibly converted to Islam.[27] The Ottoman state bore ultimate responsibility for the killings,[40] whose purpose was violently restoring the previous social order in which Christians would unquestioningly accept Muslim supremacy,[41][42] and forcing Armenians to emigrate, thereby decreasing their numbers.[43]
Gerakan Pemuda Turki
Abdul Hamid’s despotism prompted the formation of an opposition movement, the Young Turks, who sought to overthrow him and restore the constitution.[44] One faction of the Young Turks was the secret and revolutionary Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), based in Salonica, from which the charismatic conspirator Mehmed Talat (later Talat Pasha) emerged as a leading member.[45] Although skeptical of a growing, exclusionary Turkish nationalism in the Young Turk movement, the Dashnaktsutyun decided to ally with the CUP in December 1907.[46][47] In 1908, the Young Turk Revolution began with a string of CUP assassinations of leading Hamidian officials in Macedonia.[48][49] Abdul Hamid failed to quell the rebellion, and the capitol was threatened by invasion by military units controlled by CUP-supporting officers in Macedonia. He was forced to reinstate the 1876 constitution and restore parliament, which was celebrated by Ottomans of all ethnicities and religions.[50][51] Although security improved in the eastern provinces after 1908,[52] the Young Turks did not reverse the land usurpation of the previous decades, contrary to Armenian hopes

Abdul Hamid attempted an unsuccessful countercoup in early 1909, supported by conservatives and some liberals who opposed the CUP’s increasingly repressive governance.[54] When news of the countercoup reached Adana, armed Muslims attacked the Armenian quarter and Armenians returned fire. Ottoman soldiers did not protect Armenians and instead armed the rioters.[55] Between 20,000 and 25,000 people, mostly Armenians, were killed in Adana and nearby towns.[56] Unlike the Hamidian massacres, the events were not organized by the central government but instigated by local officials, intellectuals, and Islamic clerics, including CUP supporters in Adana.[57] Although the massacres went unpunished, the Dashnaktsutyun continued to hope that reforms to improve security and restore lands were forthcoming, until late 1912, when they broke with the CUP and appealed to the European powers.[58][59][60] On 8 February 1914, under heavy international pressure, the CUP agreed to the 1914 Armenian reforms, which were never implemented due to World War I. CUP leaders feared these reforms would lead to partition and cited them as a reason for the elimination of the Armenian population the following year

PErang Balkan
Balkan Wars
The 1912 First Balkan War resulted in the loss of almost all of the empire’s European territory[64] and the mass expulsion of Muslims from the Balkans.[65] Ottoman Muslim society was incensed by the atrocities committed against Balkan Muslims, intensifying anti-Christian sentiment and leading to a desire for revenge.[66][67] In January 1913, the CUP launched another coup, installed a one-party state, and strictly repressed all real or perceived internal enemies.[68][69] Although the Young Turk movement included a number of factions, by 1914 its most influential ideologues had rejected Ottoman multiculturalism in favor of pan-Turanism or pan-Islam, aiming to consolidate the empire by reducing the number of Christians and increasing the Muslim population.[70] CUP leaders such as Talat and Enver Pasha came to blame non-Muslim population concentrations in strategic areas for many of the empire’s problems, concluding by mid-1914 that they were “internal tumors” to be excised.[71] Armenians were considered most dangerous, because their homeland in Asia Minor was claimed as the last refuge of the Turkish nation.[72][73]

After the 1913 coup, the CUP pursued a policy of changing the demographic balance of border areas by resettling Muslim immigrants while coercing Christians to leave;[74] immigrants were promised property that had belonged to Christians.[75] When parts of Eastern Thrace were reoccupied by the Ottoman Empire during the Second Balkan War in mid-1913, local Greeks, and Armenians—who had not fought against the empire—were subjected to looting and intimidation.[76] Around 150,000 Greek Orthodox from the Aegean littoral were forcibly deported in May and June 1914 by Muslim militias secretly backed by the government.[77][78][79] This ethnic cleansing campaign, brought to an end in exchange for Greece’s promise to remain neutral in the upcoming war,[80] has been described by historian Taner Akçam as “a trial run for the Armenian Genocide”.

Perang Dunia I

In August 1914, CUP representatives went to a Dashnak conference demanding that, in the event of war with Russia, the Dashnaktsutyun incite Russian Armenians to intervene on the Ottoman side. Instead, the delegates resolved that Armenians should fight for the countries of their citizenships.[83] During its war preparations, the Ottoman government recruited thousands of prisoners to join the paramilitary Special Organization,[84] which initially focused on stirring up revolts among Muslims behind Russian lines beginning in mid-1914.[85] On 29 October 1914, the Ottoman Empire entered World War I on the side of the Central Powers by launching a surprise attack on Russian ports in the Black Sea.[86]

Wartime requisitions, often corrupt and arbitrary, were used to target Greeks and Armenians in particular.[87] Armenian leaders urged young men to accept conscription into the army, but many soldiers, of all ethnicities and religions, deserted due to difficult conditions and concern for their families.[88] During the Ottoman invasion of Russian and Persian territory, the Special Organization massacred local Armenians and Syriac Christians.[89][90] Beginning in November 1914, provincial governors of Van, Bitlis, and Erzurum sent many telegrams to the central government pressing for more severe measures against the Armenians, both regionally and throughout the empire.[91] These pressures played a key role in the intensification of anti-Armenian persecution and met a favorable response already before 1915.[92] Armenian civil servants were dismissed from their posts in late 1914 and early 1915.[93] On 25 February 1915, Enver Pasha ordered the removal of all non-Muslims serving in Ottoman forces from their posts; they were to be disarmed and transferred to labor battalions.[94] Beginning in early 1915, the Armenian soldiers in labor battalions were systematically executed, although many skilled workers were spared until 1916.

Genosida
Minister of War Enver Pasha took over command of the Ottoman armies for the invasion of Russian territory, and tried to encircle the Russian Caucasus Army at the Battle of Sarikamish, fought from December 1914 to January 1915. Unprepared for the harsh winter conditions,[96] his forces were routed, losing more than 60,000 men.[97] The retreating Ottoman army indiscriminately destroyed dozens of Ottoman Armenian villages in Bitlis Vilayet, massacring their inhabitants.[93] Returning to Constantinople, Enver Pasha publicly blamed his defeat on Armenians in the region, saying they had actively sided with the Russians, which became a consensus among CUP leaders.[98][99] Claims of Armenian revolts deflected blame for the Ottoman military’s failures, especially Sarikamish.[100] Any local incident or discovery of arms in the possession of Armenians was cited as evidence for a coordinated conspiracy against the empire.[94] Akçam concludes that “the allegations of an Armenian revolt in the documents … have no basis in reality but were deliberately fabricated”.[101][102]

Most historians date the final decision to exterminate the Armenian population to the end of March or early April 1915.[103] Historian Ronald Grigor Suny states, “Deportations ostensibly taken for military reasons rapidly radicalized monstrously into an opportunity to rid Anatolia once and for all of those peoples perceived to be an imminent existential threat to the future of the empire.”[104]

The province of Van descended into lawlessness by the end of 1914,[105] and massacres of Armenian men were occurring in the Başkale area from December.[106] Dashnak leaders attempted to keep the situation calm, urging Armenians to tolerate localized massacres because even justifiable self-defense could lead to a generalized massacre.[107] The governor, Cevdet Bey, ordered the Armenians of Van to hand over their arms on 18 April, creating a dilemma for the Armenians: If they obeyed, they expected to be killed, but if they refused, it would provide a pretext for massacres elsewhere. Other Dashnak leaders having been killed, Aram Manukian organized the fortification of the Armenian quarter of Van and defended it from the Ottoman attack that began on 20 April.[108][109]

During the siege, Armenians in surrounding villages were massacred at Cevdet’s orders. Russian forces liberated Van on 18 May, finding 55,000 corpses in the province—about half its prewar Armenian population.[110] Cevdet’s forces proceeded to Bitlis and attacked Armenian and Syriac villages; men were killed immediately, women and children kidnapped by local Kurds, and others marched away to be killed later. By the end of June, there were only a dozen Armenians in the vilayet. Around Muş, 141,000 Armenians in more than 200 villages were ethnically cleansed during the second week of July.[111]

During the night of 23–24 April 1915, at the orders of Talat Pasha, hundreds of Armenian political activists, intellectuals, and community leaders—including many of Talat’s former political allies—were rounded up in Constantinople and across the empire. This order, intended to eliminate the Armenian leadership and anyone capable of organizing resistance, resulted in the torture and eventually murder of most of those arrested, who were forced to confess to a nonexistent Armenian conspiracy against the empire.[112][113][114] The same day, Talat ordered the shuttering of all Armenian political organizations[115] and diverted the Armenians who had previously been removed from Alexandretta, Dörtyol, Adana, Hadjin, Zeytun, and Sis to the Syrian Desert, instead of the previously planned destination of central Asia Minor, where they would likely have survived

Ekseksui
Although the majority of able-bodied men had been conscripted, others remained if they were too old or young, had deserted, or had paid the exemption tax. Unlike in the Hamidian massacres or Adana events, massacres were usually not committed in the Armenian villages, to avoid destruction of property or unauthorized looting. Instead, the men were usually separated from the rest of the deportees during the first few days and executed. Few resisted, believing it would put their families in greater danger.[143] Boys above the age of twelve (sometimes fifteen) were treated as adult men.[144] Execution sites were chosen for proximity to major roads and for rugged terrain, lakes, wells, or cisterns to facilitate the concealment or disposal of corpses.[145][142]

More than 500,000 Armenians passed through the Firincilar plain south of Malatya. Arriving convoys, having passed through the plain and approaching the Kahta highlands, would have found gorges already filled with corpses from previous convoys, in one of the deadliest areas during the genocide.[146] Thousands of Armenians were killed near Lake Hazar, pushed by paramilitary units off the cliffs into valleys from which the only escape was into the lake.[142] Many others were trapped in valleys of tributaries of the Tigris, Euphrates, or Murat River by members of the Special Organization; their bodies were thrown into the river. These corpses thus arrived in Upper Mesopotamia before the first of the living deportees.[147] Armenian men were often drowned by being tied together back-to-back before being thrown in the water, a method that was not used on women.[148]

Authorities viewed disposal of bodies through rivers as a cheap and efficient method, but it caused widespread pollution downstream. So many bodies floated down the Tigris and Euphrates rivers that they sometimes blocked the rivers and needed to be cleared with explosives. Other rotting corpses became stuck to the riverbanks, while some traveled as far as the Persian Gulf. The rivers remained polluted long after the massacres, and Arab populations downstream were affected by epidemics.[149]

Deadh March

Women and children, who made up the great majority of deportees, were usually not executed immediately, but subjected to hard marches through mountainous terrain without food and water. Those who could not keep up were left to die or shot.[150] During 1915, some were forced to walk as far as 1,000 kilometres (620 mi) in the summer heat.[124] In order to preserve families, older women would give away their food to younger family members and mothers would give away their daughters before their sons. When no girls remained, mothers would give their lives to protect at least one male descendant.[133]

Tens of thousands of Armenians died along the roads and their bodies were buried hastily or, more often, simply left beside the roads. Key roads threatened to become impassible due to the contamination of corpses, and typhus epidemics spread in nearby villages; the Ottoman government also wanted the corpses cleared to prevent photographic documentation. The Ottoman government ordered the corpses to be cleared as soon as possible, which was not uniformly followed.

Islamisasi

Akçam states that Islamization, carried out as a systematic state policy, “was as much a structural element of genocide as physical destruction”.[153] An estimated 100,000 to 200,000 Armenians were Islamized.[154] Some Armenians were allowed to convert to Islam and evade deportation, but where their numbers exceeded the 5 to 10 percent threshold, or where there was a risk of their being able to preserve their nationality and culture, the regime insisted on their physical destruction.[155]

Young women and girls were often appropriated as house servants or sex slaves. Some boys were abducted to work as unfree laborers for individual Muslims, or sent to state-run orphanages.[145][156] Some children were forcibly seized, but others were sold or given up by their parents to save their lives.[157][158] Most of them endured exploitation, hard labor without pay, forced conversion, and physical and sexual abuse.[156]

Women and children who fell into Muslim hands during the journey typically ended up in Turkish or Kurdish hands, in contrast with those captured in Syria by Arabs and Bedouins.[159] The CUP permitted marriage of Armenian females into Muslim households, as these women were forced to convert to Islam and would lose their Armenian identity.[145] By such marriages or adoptions, Muslim families were entitled to the Armenian family’s property.[160] Military commanders told their men to “do to [the women] whatever you wish”, resulting in widespread rapes.[161]

Historian Hilmar Kaiser states that for Armenians, “Rape meant an irreparable transgenerational loss of self-esteem, or ‘honor’”.[145] Although Armenian women tried various means of avoiding sexual violence, often suicide was the only available means of escape.[162] Deportees were displayed naked in Damascus and sold as sex slaves in some areas, constituting an important source of income for accompanying gendarmes.[163] Some were sold in Arabian slave markets to Muslim Hajj pilgrims and ended up as far away as Tunisia or Algeria.[164]

The first arrivals in mid-1915 were accommodated in Aleppo, but from mid-November the convoys were denied access to the city and redirected along the Baghdad Railway or the Euphrates towards Mosul. The first transit camp was established at Sibil, east of Aleppo; one convoy would arrive each day while another would depart for Meskene or Deir ez-Zor.[165] There were 25 concentration camps in Syria and Upper Mesopotamia.[166] In late 1915, the camps around Aleppo were liquidated and the survivors were forced to march to Ras al-Ayn; the camps around Ras al-Ayn were closed in early 1916 and the survivors sent to Deir ez-Zor.[167]

In general, Armenians were denied food and water during and after their forced march to the Syrian desert;[168][169] many died of starvation, exhaustion, or disease, especially dysentery, typhus, and pneumonia.[168][170] In some cases local officials gave Armenians food, and in others they were able to bribe officials for food and water.[168] Aid organizations were officially barred from providing food to the deportees, although some circumvented these prohibitions.[171] Survivors testified that some Armenians refused aid as they believed it would only prolong their suffering.[172]

By October 1915, some 870,000 deportees had reached Syria and Upper Mesopotamia. Most were repeatedly transferred between camps, being held in each camp for a few weeks, until there were very few survivors.[173] This strategy physically weakened the Armenians and spread disease, so much that some camps were shut down in late 1915 due to the threat of disease spreading to the Ottoman military.[168][174] The guards raped female prisoners and also allowed Bedouins to raid the camps at night for looting and rape; some women were forced into marriage.[175][169] Childless Turks, Arabs, and Jews would come to the camps to buy Armenian children from their parents; thousands of children were sold in this manner.[173]

Armenian ability to adapt and survive was greater than the perpetrators expected.[122] A loosely organized, Armenian-led resistance network based in Aleppo succeeded in helping many deportees, saving Armenian lives.[176] At the beginning of 1916 some 500,000 deportees were alive.[177] After hearing from German politicians that they expected surviving Armenians to be allowed to return home after the war, Talat Pasha ordered a second wave of massacres in early 1916.[178] More than 200,000 Armenians were killed between March and October 1916, often in remote areas near Deir ez-Zor and on parts of the Khabur valley, where their bodies would not create a public health hazard.[179][180] The massacres killed most of the Armenians who had survived the camp system.[167] Intentional, state-sponsored killing of Armenians mostly ceased by the end of January 1917, although sporadic massacres and starvation continued to kill.[181]

Konspirasi Di Balik Genosida
A secondary motivation for genocide was the destruction of the Armenian middle class to make room for a Turkish and Muslim bourgeoisie.[131] The campaign to Turkify the economy began in June 1914 with a law that obliged many ethnic minority merchants to hire Muslims. The businesses of deported Armenians were taken over by Muslims who were often incompetent, leading to economic difficulties.[183] On 13 September 1915, the Ottoman parliament passed the “Temporary Law of Expropriation and Confiscation,” formalizing commissions to redistribute property confiscated from Armenians[184] and excluding any possibility of their return.[185] Confiscated property was often used to fund the deportation of Armenians and resettlement of Muslims, as well as for army, militia, and other government spending.[186] The genocide had catastrophic effects on the Ottoman economy; Muslims were disadvantaged by the deportation of skilled professionals and entire districts fell into famine following their farmers’ deportation.[187]

Confiscated Armenian properties formed much of the basis of the Republic of Turkey’s economy, endowing it with capital. The dispossession and exile of Armenian competitors enabled many lower-class Turks (i.e. peasantry, soldiers, and laborers) to rise to the middle class.[188] The expropriation was part of a drive to build a statist “national economy” controlled by Muslim Turks.[189][136][190] All traces of Armenian existence, including churches and monasteries, libraries, archaeological sites, khachkars, and animal and place names, were systematically erased.[189][191][192] Confiscation of Armenian assets continued into the second half of the twentieth century.[193]

Dead Toll
The genocide reduced the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire by 90 percent.[194] The exact number of Armenians who died is not known and is impossible to determine,[195] but both contemporaries and later historians have estimated that around 1 million Armenians perished in the genocidal campaign during World War I.[2][196] Historians estimate that 800,000 to 1.2 million Armenians were deported.[197][198] Talat Pasha’s estimates, published in 2007, gave an incomplete total of 924,158; officials’ notes suggest increasing this number by 30 percent. The resulting estimate of 1.2 million deported is in line with estimates by Johannes Lepsius and Arnold J. Toynbee.[199]

Based on contemporary estimates, Akçam estimated that by late 1916, only 200,000 deported Armenians were still alive.[197] Death rates varied widely by province. While in Bitlis and Trabizond 99% of the Armenian population vanished from the statistical record between 1915 and 1917, in Adana 38% were missing and the others survived in another province, or were not deported at all.[200] Suny states that “The twentieth century had not yet witnessed such a colossal loss of life directed at a particular people by a government.