Saturday, March 10, 2012

The Number of Ottoman Armenians in an Iraqi Newspaper of 1909 and Other Sources

By: Ara Sarkis Ashjian,

Iraqi Armenian Researcher,

Yerevan, Armenia

An Iraqi well-known newspaper, published in 1909, mentioned that there were 2 million 300 thousand Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire.

“Sada Babil” (Babylon's Echo, published in Baghdad) newspaper mentioned, in an article entitled "Races and Religions of the Ottoman Kingdom", that the population of the Ottoman Empire amounted to 25 million. The following races (not ranked according to their numbers, Armenians were wrongly put under the Persian race, A.S.A.) were living in the Empire:

a. Turkish race: 10 million (Turks: 9 million 700 thousand; Turkmens: 300 thousand),

b. Greek-Latin race: 4 million 300 thousand,

c. Slavic race: 1 million 682 thousand,

d. Georgian race: 705 thousand,

e. Indian race: 212 thousand,

f. Persian race: 3 million 300 thousand (Armenians: 2 million 300 thousand, of which 2 million 235 thousand "Grigorian" Armenians, 60 thousand "United" (Catholic) Armenians, 5 thousand Protestant Armenians; Kurds: 1 million)

g. Semitic race: 5 million 356 thousand (Arabs: 4 million; Druzes: 310 thousand; Maronites: 482 thousand; Chaldeans: 233 thousand; Syrians or Syriac People: 73 thousand; Jews: 258 thousand).

The Total: 25 million[1].

This valuable information of the Iraqi well-known newspaper was published in the period when Iraq was subjected to the Ottoman Empire under the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) (or Ittihad ve Terakki Jemiyeti), which orchestrated the Armenian Genocide in 1915. This challenges the Turkish state's propaganda to deny the Armenian Genocide, claiming that it was impossible to kill one and a half million Armenians in the Ottoman Empire as the number of the Armenians in 1915 was only 1 million 300 thousand[2].

Also, in 1844 the Ottoman government recorded a total of 2.4 million Armenians. Abdolonyme Ubicini, a French historian and journalist, was one of the first to publish the 1844 figure by adding that he considers it an underestimation of the total Ottoman Armenian population. A 20^th century Turkish professor, Ibrahim Hakki Akyol, also considers the 1844 as an underestimation of the total Ottoman population because the taxes to be set for each vilayet and kaza would be based on the census result, and the population wanted to avoid them. In 1867 the 2.4 million figure remains unchanged, and was used by Ottoman official Salaheddin Bey in a book published on the occasion of the International Exposition in Paris. On the same occasion, an Ottoman Armenian official named Migirdich Bey Dadian gives a 3.4 million figure which the Ottoman government did not contest[3].

From these numbers it becomes obvious that the number of the Armenian population in the Ottoman Empire was decreased due to persecution and genocidal policy adopted by the government. 6,000-10,000 Armenians were massacred between 1877 and 1878, 300,000-500,000 between 1894 and 1896, 8,000 in 1904, 30,000 in 1909. Two million Armenians perished in the period from 1915 to 1922. By 1923 the Armenian population of Turkey had been reduced to those living in Constantinople.

[1] Races and Religions in the Ottoman Kingdom, Sada Babil newspaper, First Year, No. 2, Aug. 20, 1909, Baghdad, Iraq, pp.1-2 (in Arabic).

[2] Also read my article entitled "The human losses during the Armenian genocide in two Iraqi Newspapers of February 1919".

http://www.globalarmenianheritage-adic.fr/0ab/9_iraqinewspapers1919.htm