The issue of Armenian properties became an important part of historiography on the Armenian Genocide since the 2000s. This contribution aims to present an overview of the literature on the confiscation and appropriation of Armenian properties during the genocide by analyzing the development of different approaches to the issue and recent trends in academic research.

Since the aftermath of the genocide, Armenian local historians, such as Lut’fik Kuyumdjian, Puzant Yeghiayan, E. G. Vartapet Krnazian and Vahe Haig, pointed out to the confiscation of Armenian properties during the genocide and provided information regarding the process of property transfer at the local level.Footnote ¹ Besides these works, Levon Vartan’s study, which focuses on the issue of abandoned properties, was one of the first academic books on the legal framework in which Armenian properties were confiscated.Footnote ² However, despite the existence of these works, the issue of Armenian properties was not seen as a significant research area in its own right till the 2000s. Several factors contributed to the emergence of the issue of confiscation and appropriation of Armenian properties as a significant academic research area in recent years.

As pointed out by M. Fatih Uslu and Lerna Ekmekçioğlu in their contributions to the current debate, the rise of democratization and reconciliation debates in Turkey contributed to the expansion of research on different aspects of the Armenian Genocide. Public debate and political atmosphere in the 2000s contributed to the opening of Ottoman and Republican archives for researchers. While the opening of Ottoman and Republican archives brought the opportunity for researchers to examine the correspondence between central government and local officers and genocidal practice on the ground, some documents are still beyond the reach of academic scrutiny. For instance, the documents of the Abandoned Properties Commissions, -which were responsible for keeping registers the old and new owners, sizes and values of confiscated Armenian properties could not be located in any of the Ottoman archives yet. Another practical obstacle of researchers is the selective admittance procedure in the Military Archives of Turkey (ATASE), which contain thousands of documents related to the First World War. Last but not the least, the fact that the archives of the Title Deeds Registry are closed for researchers hinders the development of academic debate based on empiric data.

Another factor that contributed to the rising significance of the issue of Armenian properties was the opening of academic discussion regarding the continuities between the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) and the Republican regime and the role of Armenian properties in the re-establishment of state-society relations. Çağlar Keyder has provided important insights in this regard by pointing out to the significance of the property transfer in the establishment of an alliance between the Ankara government and local population, especially local power holders, and the attempt to create a Muslim bourgeoisie by allocating confiscated properties of non-Muslims in the early Republican period.Footnote ³ The significance of confiscation, appropriation and distribution of Armenian properties for re-designing of state-capital relations in Turkey was further scrutinized by Sait Çetinoğlu in the 2000s.Footnote ⁴ Hrant Dink Foundation contributed to the public discussion on this issue by organizing conferences on the economic and social history of several regions which had significant Armenian populations before the genocide and by publishing a detailed study on the confiscation of Armenian foundations’ properties in Istanbul.Footnote ⁵

Increased academic interest on the issue of the confiscation and appropriation of Armenian properties points out the need to examine the scope of seizures before the genocide in order to understand the complexity of inter-communal relations and the role of land conflicts in their deterioration. Janet Klein has examined the significance ascribed to these properties by Hamidian chiefs who usurped them using their military and political power in the eastern Anatolia.Footnote ⁶ Stephan H. Astourian has also analyzed the land issue and agrarian relations in the late Ottoman Empire by comparing Eastern provinces and Cilicia, pointing out to legal measures and illegal actions such as seizure and plunder.Footnote ⁷ Likewise, Dikran M. Kaligian explored the way in which this problem was discussed in the negotiations between the CUP and the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF) after 1908.Footnote ⁸ These studies show that the land question, which resulted from the seizure of Armenian properties by Hamidian troops and local power holders during and after the Hamidian massacres in the 1890s, was already a hot potato for the Ottoman government on the eve of the genocide.

The confiscation of Armenian properties during the genocide was a heavily regulated policy matter. The Unionist government issued several decrees, laws, orders and decisions to control the confiscation process. This led to the development of a sophisticated legal framework and administrative mechanism during the genocidal process. One of the first works to document the legal framework in which the Armenian properties were confiscated was written by Salâhaddin Kardeş who compiled several laws, decisions and decrees regarding the issue. While being an important step for documenting the legal framework, this book lacked an analytical framework and examination.Footnote ⁹ Nevzat Onaran, in his work on the confiscation of Armenian and Greek properties, contributed to the filling of this gap by examining the legal texts in crosscheck with parliamentary debates.Footnote ¹⁰ In 2012, Taner Akçam and Ümit Kurt published a detailed analysis of the legal framework through which the Armenian properties were seized and showed the objectives of the central government behind the changes in this framework.Footnote ¹¹ The works of Onaran and Akçam and Kurt are also important for the fact that they discuss the continuity between the confiscation practices of the CUP and the Republican regime.

The links between destruction of a particular collective identity and policies of confiscation in cases of mass violence have been explored by scholars studying different historical cases including the Holocaust, Rwanda Genocide and ethnic cleansing in former Yugoslavia.Footnote ¹² In his study on the confiscation of Jewish property in the Holocaust, Martin Dean argues that “seizure of property, looting of the victims, and their economic displacement are intertwined with other motives for racial and interethnic violence and intensify their devastating effects” in the cases of ethnic cleansing and genocide.Footnote ¹³ As underlined by Ekmekçioğlu in this roundtable, studies on Armenian Genocide put the emphasis on the loss of lives rather than other integral parts of genocidal violence -like rape, forced assimilation and property transfer. In recent years, however, this trend began to change with the expansion of studies scrutinizing the cordial relationship between the processes of confiscation and destruction of Armenian properties and the intended annihilation of Armenian identity and existence. Besides examining the economic motives of the organizers of genocide, which include the settlement of immigrants, the creation of a Muslim bourgeoisie and the improvement of state capacity, several scholars underlined that the processes of confiscation and property transfer were integral parts of the genocidal process. The severing of the link between Armenian population and their properties was crucial for the genocide policy; because it was a means to ensure the detachment of Armenian identity from Anatolia. The destruction of public manifestations of Armenian identity, like communal properties and monuments and post-genocidal policies to hinder the return of Armenians began to be discussed in line with this new emphasis. Simon Payaslian’s and Dickran Kouymjian’s works on communal properties, like churches and schools, were important contributions in this regard.Footnote ¹⁴

In addition to the recognition of the processes of confiscation and appropriation as an integral element of genocidal destruction, several academic works published in the 2000s began to examine practices on the ground. The availability of new Ottoman documents improved the ability of researchers to triangulate historical data from different sources, including state archives, survivor’s memoirs and institutional records, contributing to the enrichment of knowledge regarding the details of genocidal practices on different localities. Hilmar Kaiser’s 2006 article is one of the first academic works to examine the confiscation practices on the ground and the ways in which these practices differed from the expectations of the CUP government, which aimed to be in control of the confiscation and distribution processes.Footnote ¹⁵ The work of Bedross Der Matossian and the book I co-authored with Uğur Ü. Üngör can also be seen as examples of this approach, which aims to analyze the links and gaps between central policy and local practice.Footnote ¹⁶

As this review intended to show, the issue of confiscation and appropriation of Armenian properties emerged as a rich academic research area in the 2000s. Despite this new significance of the issue in terms of academic interest, there are several questions and issues, which remain understudied. One of these is the effects of the processes of confiscation, appropriation and distribution on labor relations and production patterns. How did the property transfer affect the crops and goods in the production of which Armenians played vital roles? Could the new Muslim bourgeoisie whose start-up capital was the Armenian properties become successful economic actors? Did this process of property transfer contribute to class stratification? Or did it open the way for social mobility? These questions can only be answered through detailed studies on different localities. Armenian sources, including the archives of the Patriarchate and Armenian foundations, have been largely sidelined in historical studies conducted in Turkey. As explained by Bedross Der Matossian in detail, there are several Armenian sources, which can provide valuable information for research projects that can be formulated around these questions. The fact that more scholars have been learning Armenian in recent years hints that Armenian sources will be incorporated into more studies in years to come. Considering the importance of regional differences in the Ottoman Empire, regional comparisons with regards to these questions can provide valuable insights regarding economic and social history. Another issue, which remains understudied in the literature on the confiscation, appropriation and distribution of Armenian properties, is the links between material motives and choices of the ordinary people. How did the Muslim immigrants settled on Armenian properties react to the prospects of their return? Beyond theoretical reasoning, did the distribution of Armenian properties serve as a means to re-establish state-society relations in different localities? If so, is it possible to trace this in the acts of those who benefited from this process in the Republican period? Academic research seeking to answer these questions can enrich our understanding of the history of the Armenian Genocide, the late Ottoman Empire and Republican Turkey.