Armenians After the Genocide

There were an estimated 1.8 million Armenians in the Ottoman Empire before the genocide. Historians estimate that between 600,000 and 1.2 million were murdered in the genocide. ¹

Survivors had a wide variety of outcomes. Some Armenians in the eastern provinces of Anatolia were rescued or hidden by government officials or Kurdish and Turkish friends. ² Many Armenian women and children were kidnapped or adopted into Turkish, Kurdish, or Arab families. Those who survived deportation to the Syrian desert ended up in refugee camps throughout the Middle East. ³ Many Armenians also escaped to Lebanon or Russia. ⁴

Armenians in western Anatolia, especially in major cities, were more likely to survive.  The majority of Armenians in the cities of Constantinople (Istanbul) and Smyrna (Izimir) escaped deportation, as the Ottoman government was less likely to carry out mass killings where foreign diplomats were stationed. ⁵ But any Armenians who remained within the Ottoman Empire after the war ended continued to be in jeopardy.

A few months before the end of World War I, at a time when a civil war was raging in Russia, Armenian leaders on the Russian side of the border with the Ottoman Empire formed their own republic. Although the Allies made promises, they did little to protect the emerging Armenian Republic.

In 1919, Mustafa Kemal, a former officer in the Ottoman army, formed a new Turkish Nationalist Movement and set out to end the postwar occupation of Anatolia by the Allies.  Leading remnants of the Ottoman military he defeated Allied forces and massacred Armenians who had resettled in parts of the empire that the Allies had occupied. Then in 1920, Kemal's forces invaded the new Republic of Armenia. ⁶

Desperate to save their remaining land, the leaders of the Armenian Republic were forced to turn to Communist Russia for help, forgoing national independence. Until the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, the country of Armenia existed as much in memory and diaspora as it did in any one place on the map. Few Armenians remained in the new Republic of Türkiye when it was established by Kemal in 1923. Today, Armenians are spread across the globe, with the largest populations in the Republic of Armenia (established in 1991), the United States, and France.

• 1“The Armenian Genocide (1915–16): Overview,” The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Accessed May 27, 2025.
• 2The Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal, “Verdict of the Tribunal,” Gerard Libaridian, ed. in A Crime of Silence: The Armenian Genocide by The Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal (London, Zed Books, 1985), 215–217.
• 3USC Shoah Foundation, "Armenian Genocide Collection."
• 4The Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal, “Verdict of the Tribunal.”
• 5The Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal, “Verdict of the Tribunal.”
• 6Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute Foundation, "Mustafa Kemal and the Armenian Genocide."