Timeline

1914

21/2/1914
A Turkish boycott of Armenian businesses is declared by the Ittihadists. Dr. Nazim travels throughout the provinces to implement the boycott.

26/2/1914
The police spy David notifies Reshad Bey, Chief of the Political Section of the Constantinople Police Department that he is providing the names, biographies, pictures, and speeches about reform, as well as other data, of two thousand leading Armenians.

2/3/1914
Parliamentary elections held in Turkey with only candidates approved by the CUP winning seats.

14/3/1914
The Ittihadist Mustafa Abdulhalik Renda, the vice-governor of Seghert, is appointed governor-general of Bitlis Province.

28/7/1914
Negotiations are started between the Turkish and German Imperial governments.

1/8/1914
Germany declares war on Russia. Beginning of World War I.

2/8/1914
A secret treaty of alliance is signed between Turkey and Germany virtually placing the Turkish armed forces under German command.

3/8/1914
The Turkish government sends sealed envelopes containing a general mobilisation order to district and village councils, with the strict instructions that they were not to be opened until further notice. A fortnight later, with the approval of the Ittihad Committee, instructions are issued to open the envelopes.

8/8/1914
Censorship of all telegraphic communication is announced by the government.

18/8/1914
Looting is reported in Sivas, Diyarbekir, and other provinces, under the guise of collecting war contributions. Stores owned by Armenian and Greek merchants are vandalized.

18/8/1914
1,080 shops owned by Armenians are burned in the city of Diyarbekir.

22/8/1914
The male population between the ages of 20 and 45 is conscripted by the Turkish armed forces.

28/8/1914
Turkish troops are garrisoned in Armenian schools and churches in Sivas Province. In the city of Sivas, 56,000 soldiers of the 10th Army Corps are quartered in and around the Christian districts.

8/9/1914
The Turkish government abrogates the Capitulations (the commercial and judicial rights of the Europeans in the Ottoman Empire).

11/9/1914
The Armenian National Assembly, composed of civil and religious representatives, meets in Constantinople and advises Armenians in the provinces to remain calm in the face of provocation.

27/9/1914
The Dardanelles Straits are closed to foreign shipping.

27/9/1914
News reaches Constantinople about the demand made by the government of the Armenian population in Zeitun to turn in its weapons, including all types of knives.

30/9/1914
The government distributes arms to the Muslim residents of the town of Keghi in Erzerum Province on the excuse that the Armenians there were unreliable.

1/10/1914
All foreign postal services in Turkey are closed on government order.

1/10/1914
Nazaret Chavush, the most notable Armenian leader in Zeitun, is murdered on the order of Haidar Pasha, governor of Marash.

7/10/1914
News reaches Constantinople of looting under the guise of war contributions in Shabin-Karahisar.

10/10/1914
News that 'the war contribution' looting of Armenians was continuing in Diyarbekir Province.

10/10/1914
In Zeitun, all the Armenian notables are called to a meeting. About three score attend and are immediately arrested.

13/10/1914
News of requisitions imposed on Armenian businesses as 'war contributions' reaches Constantinople from every province.

13/10/1914
News reaches Constantinople of starvation and the spread of disease in Sivas Province because of the desperate conditions created by the 'war contributions' campaign conducted against the Armenians.

17/10/1914
Bands of chetes begin looting, violating women and children, and large-scale murdering in Erzerum Province

17/10/1914
Leaders of the Armenian nationalist Dashnak party organisation in Erzerum are arrested.

22/10/1914
Enver authorises the combined German-Turkish navy to carry out a stealth attack on Russia without declaration of war.

29/10/1914
Hostilities are opened between Turkey and Russia with the shelling of the Russian Black Sea coast by Ottoman naval vessels under German command.

2/11/1914
Russia formally declares war against the Ottoman Empire.

9/11/1914
News from the interior of Turkey reaches the Armenian community of Constantinople that persecutions already exceed earlier actions against the Armenians.

9/11/1914
A Proclamation of Jihad, directed against England, France, and Russia, is issued in Constantinople legitimating the formation of the chete organisations.

13/11/1914
Unfounded accusations are launched against the Armenians that they had revolted and were preparing to join the Russian forces.

14/11/1914
The village of Otsni in Erzerum Province is attacked at night by chete forces. The local Armenian priest and many other Armenians are killed. Every house is looted. The first attacks by chete forces on the Armenian villages of Erzerum are reported.

18/11/1914
The Jihad Proclamation is read in all the provinces of the Ottoman Empire.

19/11/1914
Mass executions of Armenian soldiers in the Turkish army takes place in various public squares for the purpose of terrorizing the Armenians, while with voluntary contributions, Armenians were building several hospitals for the use of the Turkish army through the Red Crescent Society.

20/11/1914
Orders are issued from Constantinople instructing the provincial administrators to oust all Armenian functionaries in the service of the Ottoman government.

21/11/1914
In Mush, Ittihadist agents distribute arms to the Turkish population after arousing them with false stories of Armenian outrages.

23/11/1914
Previously undisturbed Armenian schools and churches in Sivas Province, together with many private residences, are requisitioned by the Turkish army for use as barracks. The carts, horses, and other travel equipment of the Armenian villagers in the provinces are confiscated.

26/11/1914
Robbery and looting on a large scale is reported in Van Province.

26/11/1914
The War Ministry distributes explosives, rifles, and other equipment to the irregular forces of the Special Organisation (Teshkilati Mahsusa).

26/11/1914
Enver's uncle, Halil Pasha, the military governor of Constantinople, begins organising Special Organisation units in Constantinople by enrolling criminals released from prison.

29/11/1914
Halil Pasha instructs the governor of Izmid (Izmit) to identify leaders for Special Organisation units and to release criminals from prisons to join these bands.

29/11/1914
The vice-governor of Izmid (Izmit) arms the Special Organisation with weapons supplied by the War Ministry.

29/11/1914
Chete forces consisting of intentionally released convicts are armed by the government in Van Province. In the region of Van requisitions take the form of open robbery and looting.

30/11/1914
Having completed his job organising the Special Organisation in Artvin, Behaeddin Shakir is instructed to move on to Trebizond.

30/11/1914
The central command of the Special Organisation sends instruction for supplying the chete bands with money, vehicles, and others equipment.

1/12/1914
The beginning of a series of isolated murders to terrorize the Armenian population.

1/12/1914
Reports reach Constantinople that raids by irregular chete forces on the Armenian villages of Erzerum Province are continuing.

2/12/1914
Turks loot the properties of subjects of Allied nations.

3/12/1914
The Ittihad Inspector of Balikesir sends a message to Dr. Nazim of the central committee of the Special Organisation via Midhat Shukri, the Central Secretary of Ittihad, that the Interior Ministry and the Ittihad Committee, in accordance with issued orders, are busy organising the irregular chete bands.

5/12/1914
Reports continue reaching Constantinople that chete raids on the Armenian villages of Erzerum Province are continuing.

6/12/1914
Armenians are put to use as porters of army supplies in Erzerum, Trebizond, and Sivas Provinces under the worst of cold winter conditions for the purpose of letting them die of overwork and illness.

14/12/1914
The Turkish Cabinet charges Enver with command of the offensive on the Caucasian front and assigns Talat the position of Acting Minister of War while retaining his position as Minister of the Interior.

22/12/1914
An attack by the Ottoman Third Army corps opens the Battle of Sarikamish on the Caucasian Front.

23/12/1914
Foreign missionaries abandon the interior of Turkey as crosses on missions are broken by the Turks and replaced by crescents.

31/12/1914
Sahag Odabashian, the newly appointed Prelate of Erzinjan, while travelling from Constantinople via Sivas to Erzinjan, where he was to be installed in office, is slain in the village of Kanli-Tash, near Shabin-Karahisar, by six chetes organised by Ahmed Muammer, the governor-general of Sivas Province


1915

1/1/1915
The Ittihad representative of Bursa reports to the Ittihad Central Committee that local criminals and bandits have been registered in the Special Organisation.

1/1/1915
Nuri, the vice-governor of Gavar District in Van Province, receives orders from the military governor to kill the Armenian soldiers in the Turkish Army who were stationed in his district.

5/1/1915
The Turkish government publicly charges that Armenian bakers in the army bakeries of Sivas were poisoning the bread of the Turkish forces. The bakers are cruelly beaten, despite the fact that a group of doctors prove the charge to be false by examining the bread and even eating it. As this marks an attempt on the part of the government to incite massacre, the government does not rescind the charge.

8/1/1915
Turkish and Kurdish chetes (Halil Pasha's "First Corps") attack Armenian and Assyrian villages in northwest Persia. They remain around the city of Tavriz (Tabriz) and the city of Urmia from January 8 until January 29, 1915. From Urmia alone, more than 18,000 Armenians, together with many Assyrians and even Persian Muslims, flee to the Caucasus.

12/1/1915
Ahmed Muammer, the governor-general of Sivas Province, orders the destruction of Tavra-Koy and other strategically located villages around the city of Sivas in order to make future defence impossible for the Armenians. Inside the city of Sivas strategically-located buildings were requisitioned.

16/1/1915
The last actions of the Battle of Sarikamish are reported. The Turkish army is totally defeated and almost destroyed with a loss of 70,000 men out of 85,000.

19/1/1915
Enver arrives in Sivas by automobile from Erzerum after his calamitous defeat at Sarikamish. He instructs the Army to accept only his orders and none hereafter from the German commanders and to draft at once all those deferred in the 20 to 40 age group, along with all males between the ages of 18 and 20 and 45 to 52.

22/1/1915
Enver arrives in Constantinople by automobile from Sivas. After his arrival, he makes a speech congratulating the Armenians for admirably doing their duty on the Caucasian Front and elsewhere. Enver seeks to lull the Armenians of Constantinople who had not yet experienced the general persecutions in the provinces because of the presence of a large European community in the city.

23/1/1915
Enver, now actively Minister of War again, issues a general order to shoot all persons resisting his orders.

2/2/1915
Talaat advises German Ambassador Count Hans von Wangenheim that the war is the only propitious moment to conclude the Armenian Question.

10/2/1915
S. Pasdermadjian, the Second Director of the Ottoman Bank, is murdered in the presence of German Major-General Posseldt, who reported that no investigation was carried or was any attempt made by the Turkish authorities to apprehend the guilty parties.

10/2/1915
Enver's brother-in-law, Hafiz Hakki, dies of typhus and is replaced by Mahmud Kamil as Commander of the Third Army (Erzerum).

14/2/1915
Tahir Jevdet, the governor-general of Van Province, is reported saying that the government must begin finishing the Armenians in Van at once.

16/2/1915
The vice-governor of Mush orders 70 gendarmes to attack the village of Koms and to kill the Armenian Dashnak leader Rupen and all persons with him. Rupen and his companions resist and eventually escape to the Caucasus.

19/2/1915
Talaat, Osman Bedri, and other Ittihadist leaders decide in a meeting that should Allied naval ships force the Dardanelles, the Turks would burn Constantinople, blow up the Hagia Sophia, and slaughter the Christian inhabitants. Kerosene is distributed to all police stations in Constantinople for ready use in such an eventuality.

21/2/1915
An attack by chetes on the village of Purk near Shabin-Karahisar results in looting, murder, rape.

26/2/1915
Vramian, an Armenian parliamentary deputy from Van, writes Talaat advising him to remove the large number of chetes in Van Province.

27/2/1915
In Sivas Province a general attack is reported on many Armenian villages accompanied by raping, looting, and an increasingly larger number of killings.

27/2/1915
In the village of Chomaklu in Kayseri Province and in other places, the government demands all weapons from the Armenians.

1/3/1915
In Marash, the Armenians in the Turkish Army are deprived of their uniforms and arms.

3/3/1915
A dispatch from the Ittihad Central Committee is released announcing the decision to exterminate the Armenians.

3/3/1915
Armenian soldiers in the Erzerum army area are deprived of their uniforms and arms.

3/3/1915
The British decide to attack the Dardanelles.

5/3/1915
In Van Province, regular gendarmes and chetes are reported attacking many villages inhabited by Armenians and Assyrians.

7/3/1915
A search for weapons is conducted in Iskenderun (Alexandretta) and a mass arrest of Armenians carried out.

9/3/1915
Chetes and regular Army units attack Zeitun. Six Turkish gendarmes are killed by individuals resisting the attack.

12/3/1915
Massacres and robberies are carried in Alashkert District as part of a general campaign led by the chetes forces against the Armenian villages of the district.

12/3/1915
Mass arrests of Armenians are carried out in Dortyol and a public announcement is made that those arrested would be sent to work on road construction near Aleppo. They are never heard of again.

12/3/1915
Enver leaves for Berlin to see Kaiser Wilhelm II.

13/3/1915
A travelling commission of parliamentary deputies tours all the cities of Anatolia. The commission includes Dr. Fazil Berki, parliamentary deputy from Chankri, Ubedulla, parliamentary deputy from Smyrna, and Behaeddin Shakir, member of the Central Committee of the Ittihad Party. They address the Turkish population in the mosques describing the Armenians as internal enemies which must be destroyed.

13/3/1915
In Sivas Province the population in all the Armenian villages is disarmed.

14/3/1915
Sahag, the Catholicos of Cilicia, advises the Armenians of Zeitun not to resist under any conditions.

16/3/1915
Russian forces advance between Urmia and Tavriz.

18/3/1915
An Allied attack on the Dardanelles begins.

18/3/1915
In Zeitun, the Turkish forces arrest many of the remaining Armenian notables and intellectuals whom they torture and finally kill.

19/3/1915
Six Armenian soldiers from the town of Gurun are publicly hanged in Sivas to frighten the Armenian population.

19/3/1915
Greek recruits are massacred near Smyrna.

20/3/1915
Omer Naji, a circulating Ittihad propagandist, travels to Aleppo, Adana and nearby towns to arouse the Muslims.

24/3/1915
Chetes and gendarmes attack Armenians in the towns of Bayburt (Papert) and Terchan in Erzerum Province, and in Bitlis.

26/3/1915
Sahag, Catholicos of Cilicia, renews his instruction to the Armenians of Zeitun not to resist.

26/3/1915
Thirty more Armenian community leaders are arrested in Zeitun.

28/3/1915
The Armenian Dashnak leader, Murad, resists arrest in Sivas and flees to the mountains, and after many daring escapes reaches the Caucasus.

28/3/1915
Hamid, the governor-general of Diyarbekir Province, is removed for opposing the order of massacre, and is replaced by Dr. Reshid.

29/3/1915
In Aleppo, the capital of the province, Jemal Pasha falsely announces that the Armenians of Zeitun are in revolt and therefore he is instructing the military authorities, to the exclusion of the civilian government, to take measures to punish the Armenians.

29/3/1915
Artillery and three regiments of the regular army are sent to Zeitun as reinforcements for the three battalions which had arrived in the town in January and February.

30/3/1915
Mass beatings and tortures are inflicted on the Armenians of Chomaklu.

31/3/1915
In Marash, Turks announce a mass meeting to prepare a massacre. Acting under the terms of the March 29 order, the government forbids civilians to take matters into their own hands.

31/3/1915
Deportation of Armenians from Zeitun begins. Some of the inhabitants are sent to the Konia Desert in central Anatolia. The rest are sent to Der-el-Zor (Deir el-Zor) in the Syrian Desert.

31/3/1915
Azadamart, the leading Armenian newspaper in Constantinople is closed by an order of the government issued through the office of the Police Commissioner of Constantinople, Osman Bedri. 300 Turkish pounds in the petty cash box are stolen. The printing presses are removed to the Ittihad Press, where the organ Tanin was published by the CUP, with Huseyin Jahid (Yalchin) as editor-in-chief, and Ahmed Emin as associate editor.

1/4/1915
The mass arrest of Armenian political leaders is carried out in Sivas and other provinces.

2/4/1915
General robbery and arrests of Armenians are reported throughout Bitlis and Erzerum Provinces.

2/4/1915
In Sivas Province, battalions of gendarmery and 4000 chetes begin regular attacks on Armenian villages with increasing brutality.

3/4/1915
(Easter week) Mass arrests and a search for weapons are carried out in Marash and Hadjin (Hajen), with the seizure of all arms, including household knives. Numerous rapes during the house searches are reported.

5/4/1915
In Marash Turks demand 5,000 jackasses from the Armenians in an excuse to loot.

8/4/1915
Turkish emigrants from Bosnia are settled by the government in the villages of Zeitun District. 8,000 Turkish regulars are reported in Zeitun.

8/4/1915
The famous monastery of Zeitun is burned by the Turks.

9/4/1915
Turks declare a meeting in Marash to deport the Armenians. The Turkish government forbids civilian action on the ground that the March 16 Army command covered the situation.

11/4/1915
Talaat tells the Armenian parliamentary deputy Bedros Halajian that there will be no massacres.

12/4/1915
Widespread attacks and looting of Armenian villages in Bitlis and Erzerum Provinces are fed by the accusation that the Armenians caused the war.

13/4/1915
(toward the end of the month) The Turkish government forbids American Ambassador Henry Morgenthau to send coded messages to the American consuls and deprives him of his diplomatic prerogative of receiving communications uncensored.

14/4/1915
The governor-general of Van, Tahir Jevdet invites the Armenian parliamentary deputies from Van and the Dashnak leader Ishkhan to attend a conference.

15/4/1915
Armenian refugees from villages surrounding the city of Van arrive and notify the inhabitants that 80 villages in Van Province were already obliterated and that 24,000 Armenians had been killed in three days.

16/4/1915
The Armenian leaders Vramian and Ishkhan are slain during the night in the Kurdish village of Hirj by chetes on orders from Governor-general Tahir Jevdet.

17/4/1915
Friendly Kurds inform the inhabitants of Van of the assassination of Vramian and Ishkhan.

17/4/1915
The Armenians organise defense against the sudden attack by Turkish forces on the city of Van. (They hold out until advance units of the Russian Army consisting of Armenian volunteers arrive to their rescue on May 23, 1915).

18/4/1915
Until the end of April 32,000 more Armenians are slain in the villages of Van Province, including the inhabitants of remote villages.

18/4/1915
In Erzerum, Turkish civilians declare intentions to hold a meeting. The Army forbid it. Similar gatherings in other centres are also forbidden on the grounds that the Army is the agency responsible for handling the Armenians.

18/4/1915
The Governor-general of Van Province demands that the Armenians of the city of Van surrender their weapons. The Armenians refuse as chete units were harassing the surrounding villages.

19/4/1915
House searches are made in Diyarbekir and widespread persecution takes place.

20/4/1915
The deportation of the 25,000 Armenians of Zeitun is completed.

20/4/1915
The first large-scale arrests of Armenians are made in Diyarbekir upon the orders of Governor-general Reshid.

20/4/1915
Twenty Armenian Social Democratic Hnchak Party members are brought to the Central Prison in Constantinople to face court martial. They are hanged publicly on June 2, 1915.

24/4/1915
250 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders are arrested in Constantinople and sent to Chankri and Ayash, where they are later slain.

24/4/1915
The editors and staff of Azadamart, the leading Armenian newspaper of Constantinople, are arrested, and on June 15 are slain in Diyarbekir, where they had been transported and imprisoned.

24/4/1915
The Armenian Patriarch of Constantinople and Zohrab, Armenian deputy in the Ottoman Parliament, petition the Grand Vizier, Said Halim, the Minister of the Interior Talaat, and the President of the Senate, Rifat, on behalf of the arrested Armenians of Constantinople. Though approached separately, all three give identical answers; that the government is isolating the Armenian leadership and dissolving the Armenian political organisations.

26/4/1915
Three Armenians are hanged publicly in Mush without trial.

27/4/1915
A second meeting in Erzerum to organise a communal massacre is disbanded by the government as interference in the affairs of the Army.

27/4/1915
26 Armenian leaders are arrested in Marsovan (Merzifon). A two-week-long search for weapons is started accompanied by acts of violence and the abuse of women.

29/4/1915
Russian citizens of Armenian origin are arrested in Constantinople.

29/4/1915
The disarming of the Armenians of Constantinople is carried out with many outrages.

30/4/1915
The vice-governor of Erzinjan begins the persecution of the Armenians with the arrest of many intellectuals.

1/5/1915
The arrest of the Armenian professors and teachers of the American Euphrates College in Kharput is started.

2/5/1915
Halil Pasha's forces are defeated by the Russian Army in the Caucasus and in northern Iran, and retreat to Van, Bitlis, and Mush, where they participate in the massacre of the Armenians.
2/5/1915
3,000 English and French civilians are arrested in Constantinople.

3/5/1915
House searches are made in Aleppo.

3/5/1915
Macedonian Turkish immigrants are installed in Zeitun by the government.

3/5/1915
The deportations from the villages of Erzerum Province are started.

4/5/1915
The mass arrests of Armenian leaders in Aintab are begun.

4/5/1915
200 Armenian leaders in Erzerum are arrested.

5/5/1915
Arrests and persecutions begin in Kharput.

6/5/1915
Allied nationals in Beirut are deported to Damascus and dispersed from there.

6/5/1915
The New York Times reports that the Young Turks had adopted a policy to annihilate the Armenians.

9/5/1915
Lord Grey, British Minister of Foreign Affairs, sends a message to Enver holding him personally responsible should anything happen to the 3,000 captive English and French civilians.

10/5/1915
950 prominent Armenians are arrested in Diyarbekir on orders from Dr. Reshid, the governor-general of Diyarbekir Province.

10/5/1915
The Armenian refugees from Zeitun found in Marash, who had previously been spared deportation, are removed to the Syrian Desert.

12/5/1915
Vartkes, an Armenian deputy in the Ottoman Parliament, visits Talaat to protest the arrests of April 24.

14/5/1915
English and French civilian prisoners are deported to the interior of Anatolia.

14/5/1915
38 Armenian community leaders are arrested in the town of Chomaklu in Kayseri Province and shortly thereafter executed.

15/5/1915
The Armenian community leaders in the town of Bayburt are arrested and subsequently killed in Urbajioghli-Dere.

15/5/1915
Armenians are deported from the northern villages of Erzerum Province.

18/5/1915
Courts martial are set up in Marash to try the Armenian leaders arrested there shortly earlier.

19/5/1915
Advance troops of the Russian Army in the Caucasus led by Armenian volunteers reach Van and lift the siege of city.

19/5/1915
Armenians in the Khnus region of Erzerum Province are massacred.

21/5/1915
Regular Russian Army forces arrive in Van. They begin the cremation of the dead in the city and in the villages of the province. 55,000 dead are identified as Armenians.

21/5/1915
Armenian parliamentary deputy Vartkes visits Police Commissioner Osman Bedri to protest the arrests of the Constantinople Armenian community leaders.

22/5/1915
Turkish refugees are settled in the emptied Armenian villages of the Tortum District of Erzerum Province.

24/5/1915
A note is sent by the Allied Powers to the Turkish Cabinet holding it responsible for the massacres of the Armenians.

25/5/1915
Armenian parliamentary deputies Zohrab and Vartkes are arrested in Constantinople and later murdered while in custody in Kara-Kopru.

27/5/1915
German Marshal Otto Liman von Sanders reports that the deportations were planned by the Committee of Union and Progress, and received the approval of all the ministries, and that the execution of the plans was placed in the hands of the governors-general, their subordinates, and the police.

27/5/1915
The promulgation of the Temporary Law of Deportation, months after the depopulation of the Armenian settlements had been initiated.

27/5/1915
2,000 Armenians are deported from Marash.

27/5/1915
300 Armenians arrested on May 10 in Diyarbekir are murdered while in custody.

29/5/1915
Talaat is reported to have said that he was going to give to the Armenians a new and final residence.

29/5/1915
630 Armenians arrested on May 10 in Diyarbekir are murdered in the village of Bisheri while in custody and their bodies are thrown in the Tigris River.

31/5/1915
Two weeks of outrages perpetrated against the Armenians of the town of Chomaklu under the guise of forcing the Armenians to give up their arms are ended.

31/5/1915
German Ambassador Hans von Wangenheim advises against German interference in the deportations.

3/6/1915
Ayub Bey, an arch-assassin, leaves Adana for Aleppo in connection with the organising of massacres.

4/6/1915
Enver issues a circular dispatch classified secret and urgent concerning the deportations.

7/6/1915
The first convoy of Armenian deportees leave Erzinjan toward Kemakh on their way to the Syrian Desert.

7/6/1915
The Armenian Prelate of Shabin-Karahisar, Vaghinag Vartabed, is assassinated.

7/6/1915
The Armenians of Constantinople appeal to the German and the Austrian Embassies to prevent the deportations and associated outrages, but receive no satisfactory reply.

7/6/1915
The Armenians arrested in Sivas on April 1 and transported to Angora Province are murdered in the woods of Meshedler-Yeri. The mass slaughter is witnessed by Greek woodcutters who report the news to the Armenians of Sivas.

8/6/1915
The second convoy of deportees from Erzinjan leaves for the Syrian Desert.

9/6/1915
The third convoy of Armenians departs from Erzinjan.

9/6/1915
Three Armenian medical officers, Dr. Hairanian, Dr. Baghdasar Vartanian, and Dr. Maksud, serving in the Turkish Army are murdered in the city of Sivas.

10/6/1915
Over a period of four days the Armenians deported from the towns and villages of Erzerum Province are slaughtered in a major massacre at Kemakh.

13/6/1915
The War Ministry orders the seizure of all the domestic animals of the Armenians.

13/6/1915
The War Ministry notifies that the permits given to Armenians exempting them from the deportations and safety certificates are only provisional and temporary.

13/6/1915
25,000 Armenians are murdered by the fourth day of the Kemakh massacre. The 86th Cavalry Brigade with its officers and the 2nd Reserve Cavalry Division of the Turkish Army participate in the slaughter.

13/6/1915
Instructions concerning procedures for the deportations and urging extreme strictness are sent to provincial governors.

14/6/1915
Subhi Bey, the assistant to the Undersecretary of the Interior Ministry asks for a list of Armenians working in the shipyards, docks, and arsenals of the Ministry of the Marine.

14/6/1915
The third convoy of Armenian deportees from the town of Bayburt departs.

14/6/1915
300 Armenian community leaders are arrested in Shabin-Karahisar.

15/6/1915
Twenty members of Armenian Social Democratic Hnchak Party are publicly hanged in Constantinople as a signal to the provinces to intensify measures.

15/6/1915
Twelve Armenian community leaders are publicly hanged in Sivas.

15/6/1915
The Armenians of Shabin-Karahisar organise defense against chete forces and the regular Turkish Army.

16/6/1915
3,500 Armenian men are seized in a mass arrest in Sivas Province.

17/6/1915
Talaat is reported to have declared that he will uproot the internal enemy.

17/6/1915
1,213 Armenian men are arrested in Marsovan (Merzifon).

17/6/1915
8,500 Armenians withdraw into the ruined castle of Shabin-Karahisar to defend themselves against the Turks.

18/6/1915
160 families are deported from city of Erzinjan.

19/6/1915
A second convoy composed of 300 families leaves the city of Erzerum.

21/6/1915
The governor-general of Aleppo, Jelal Bey, resigns in protest against the deportation order and the massacres.

21/6/1915
Talaat sends instructions to prevent the populace from robbing the abandoned goods of the Armenians.

23/6/1915
The Interior Ministry advises provincial governors that the Commission on Abandoned Goods will have charge of the resettlement of Turkish Muslim immigrants.

23/6/1915
The Interior Ministry advises taking the precaution of separating the convoys of Armenian deportees by a distance of five hours.

23/6/1915
The wholesale arrest of 1,500 men is carried out in Sivas Province.

23/6/1915
First large-scale massacre of Armenian men is carried out in the town of Kharput.

23/6/1915
Wholesale arrests are made in Bitlis of the scattered remnant Armenians who had escaped the previous series of massacres.

23/6/1915
Massacres of Armenian Christians, Maronites, Nestorians, Europeans, Catholics, and other non-Muslim people in the city of Mardin are carried out under the direct order of Dr. Reshid, the governor-general of Diyarbekir Province.

23/6/1915
The Armenian notables of Trebizond are sent by boat toward Samsun, and on the way are thrown, tightly bound together, into the Black Sea.

25/6/1915
The massacre of Armenians of Bitlis is carried out under the direct orders of Mustafa Abdulhalik Renda.

25/6/1915
A government decree instructs the 30,000 Armenians in Trebizond to leave the city within 5 days.

26/6/1915
A decree issued in Erzerum orders all Armenians to leave for Syria.

26/6/1915
A decree issued in Samsun orders all Armenians to leave within 15 days.

26/6/1915
The remaining Armenian men in Sivas are arrested.

28/6/1915
The previously arrested Armenian educators and community leaders in Kharput are transported from prison to be murdered.

29/6/1915
Vartkes and Zohrab, two Armenian deputies in the Ottoman Parliament, deported from Constantinople, arrive in custody in Aleppo.

30/6/1915
3,000 Armenians from the city of Erzerum are murdered while being deported.

30/6/1915
6,000 Armenians from Zeitun arrive in the Konia Desert and nearby malarial marshes.

1/7/1915
2,000 Armenian soldiers in the Turkish Army used as labourers are massacred near the city of Kharput.

1/7/1915
The first convoy of deportees leaves the seaport of Trebizond for the south.

1/7/1915
The governor-general of Sivas announces that the first convoy of deportees from the city are to leave by July 5 in groups according to street residence. A total of 48,000 persons are deported. The governor, commissioner of police, two parliamentary deputies, the qadi (the chief religious judge), and the mufti (the religious chief) tell the Armenians that they were being resettled for the duration of the war in order to forestall any resistance.

2/7/1915
Bands of 4,000 chetes operating out of the mountains around Erzinjan begin daily raids against the southward bound convoys of Armenian deportees.

2/7/1915
The deportation decree is issued in the city of Mush.

4/7/1915
For the record an official German protest is registered with the Grand Vizier. The protest is left unanswered by the Turkish government.

4/7/1915
Neshed Pasha leaves Sivas with three regiments and artillery to subdue the Armenians resisting in Shabin-Karahisar.

5/7/1915
In Diyarbekir 2,000 Armenian soldiers working in labour corps are killed.

5/7/1915
The first convoy of deportees leaves the city of Sivas. Every day for 16 days an average of 400 families leave, the overwhelming majority being slain on route to the Syrian Desert. The last convoy departs from the city on July 20.

6/7/1915
By this date up to 1,000 Armenian families had left Trebizond in convoys headed south.

7/7/1915
The male members of 800 Armenian families in the town of Kharput are killed.

8/7/1915
Zaven, Armenian Patriarch of Constantinople, appeals to the Minister of Justice, Ibrahim Bey, who replies that he cannot intervene in matters concerning the War Ministry.

10/7/1915
2,700 persons are killed in a second massacre in Mardin.

11/7/1915
The beginning of a four-day massacre in Mush under the combined orders of parliamentary deputy Elias, vice-governor Servet, and Governor-general Mustafa Abdulhalik Renda, Talaat's brother-in-law.

11/7/1915
The Interior Ministry instructs that the Armenian villages be settled with Muslim immigrants.

12/7/1915
The government advises all governors-general that Der-el-Zor (Deir el-Zor) District is saturated and that the rest of the deportees be routed to Kirkuk District in northern Iraq, to the south of Aleppo, and to the east of Syria.

12/7/1915
Instructions are issued to distribute Armenian orphans to Turkish homes.

13/7/1915
The Muslim holy month of Ramadan begins. During the whole month the greatest concentration and universalisation of massacring and murdering occurs in every province of Turkey.

13/7/1915
The last convoy, containing all the remaining Armenians in the city, leaves Kharput.

13/7/1915
Zaven, Armenian Patriarch of Constantinople, is declined an audience with Talaat.

14/7/1915
Jemal, Commander of Aleppo's Fourth Army Corps, protests to Dr. Reshid, the governor-general of Diyarbekir Province about the dumping of dead bodies in the Euphrates River and advises burial. From June 22 to July 17, a period of 25 days, a steady stream of bodies of massacred Armenians floats down the Euphrates River.

16/7/1915
Bodies from Kharput Province and Erzerum Province float down the Euphrates to Jerablus, where they are seen and identified by German officers.

18/7/1915
In the region of Dersim, 3,000 Armenians are killed by the Turks. Almost all of the large Kurdish population of Dersim refuses to participate in the massacres and even shelters many Armenians.

21/7/1915
First day of the Turkish attack on Musa Dagh (Musa Ler in Armenian).

23/7/1915
The Italian consul at Trebizond reports about the barbarities he had witnessed.

23/7/1915
The seventh anniversary of the 1908 restoration of the liberal Constitution of 1876 is celebrated.

24/7/1915
Talaat sends instructions to Urfa, Der-el-Zor (Deir el-Zor), and Diyarbekir to bury the bodies of those fallen by the roadside and not throw them in ditches, lakes, or rivers.

24/7/1915
The registration and classification of all prisoners from Sivas is carried out. This was done in accordance with a directive in general circulation.

25/7/1915
Behaeddin Shakir, chief of the Special Organisation in Erzerum Province, telegrams Nazim Bey Resneli via Sabit Bey, the governor-general of Kharput Province, inquiring whether the Armenians deported from there are being exterminated or just being convoyed.

25/7/1915
Behaeddin Shakir instructs the governor-general of Kastamonu Province to begin the deportation of the Armenians there.

26/7/1915
Talaat informs the Ittihad party organization in Malatia explaining that half of the loot captured from the Armenians is being assigned to the Central Committee of Ittihad in Constantinople, and the other half is to be distributed to chetes. (On December 12, 1918, the Turkish newspaper, Sabah, reported that each chete in the Malatia area received as a result 15,000 Turkish pounds.)

27/7/1915
Governor-general Reshid Pasha reports to the Interior Ministry that the deportation of the Armenians from Kastamonu Province is completed.

27/7/1915
Behaeddin Shakir sends a cipher telegram to the governor-general of Adalia Province, Sabur Sami Bey, asking him what steps he was taking at a time, when in Erzerum, Van, Bitlis, Diyarbekir, Sivas, and Trebizond Provinces, not a single Armenian remains because they have all been sent in the direction of Mosul and Der-el-Zor (Deir el-Zor). Sabur sends a copy of the telegram to Talaat to show that he had received these indirect instructions.

27/7/1915
The vice-governor of Yozgat District, in Angora Province, reports to the Interior Ministry that 68,000 Armenians had been slain in the district.

28/7/1915
Sabit, the governor-general of Kharput Province, informs the Interior Ministry that all the roads are filled with the bodies of women and children and time cannot be found to bury them.

28/7/1915
The governor-general of Erzerum Province reports of widespread looting and rape.

28/7/1915
The Interior Ministry issues a circular telegram instructing that the Muslim population be settled in the large Armenian villages.

28/7/1915
The deportation of the Armenians of the town of Aintab begins.

28/7/1915
The deportation of the Armenians of the town of Kilis begins.

28/7/1915
The deportation of the Armenians of the town of Adiaman begins.

28/7/1915
Professor Kakig Ozanian of the American College and others from Marsovan (Merzifon), together with the Armenian community leader Dikran Diranian and others from Samsun, are transported to the prisons of Sivas to be killed.

30/7/1915
A mass arrest of Armenians in the city of Angora is carried out. Those arrested are slain the next day at a place six hours distance from the city of Angora.

30/7/1915
The withdrawal of the Russian Army from the city of Van begins.

31/7/1915
The mass murder of Armenian community leaders of Constantinople imprisoned in Ayash and Chankri is carried. They are killed along with the Armenians of Angora arrested the day before.

1/8/1915
The deportation of 25,000 Armenians from Adabazar, near Constantinople, begins.

1/8/1915
20,000 deportees arrive in Aleppo.

1/8/1915
Mass torture inflicted on 500 Armenians in the prisons of Adabazar.

2/8/1915
Ambassador Henry Morgenthau reports that on this day Talaat told him that the Ittihad Committee had carefully considered in all its details the matter of crushing the Armenians, and that the policy which was being pursued was that which had been officially adopted. He also told Morgenthau that the deportations were not the result of hasty decisions but of careful and prolonged deliberation. Talaat, moreover, indicated that three quarters of the Armenians had already been disposed of, and none were left in Bitlis, Van, and Erzerum.

2/8/1915
For six nights, Armenian prisoners, mostly intellectuals, held in Gok-Medrese in Sivas, which was a Seljuk structure in use as a temporary prison, were taken out and slain.

3/8/1915
150,000 deportees arrive in Aleppo from various unspecified places.

3/8/1915
4,500 Armenian deportees from Seghert and 2,000 deportees from Mezre arrive near Aleppo.

3/8/1915
15,000 Armenians arrive in Der-el-Zor (Deir el-Zor).

3/8/1915
In response to unofficial German protests about large-scale murders, rapes, and tortures inflicted on the Armenian deportees on the highways, which was creating a bad impression on the Americans, a circular telegram is sent advising against attacking and raping Armenians on the highways.

3/8/1915
Officials are instructed not to appropriate the 'abandoned goods' of the Armenians for personal use.

3/8/1915
60,000 Armenian deportees from unspecified places arrive near Aleppo.

4/8/1915
Talaat sends a circular telegram to all governors and officials expecting accountability for the 'abandoned goods.'

6/8/1915
Eighteen Armenians are publicly hanged in the town of Everek near Kayseri.

7/8/1915
The Armenians of Mersin (Mersine) are deported.

7/8/1915
The listing of all real estate seized from the Armenians is requested by the Interior Ministry.

10/8/1915
All the Armenians of Chorum are deported via Boghazli and Bozanti with the Syrian Desert their purportedly ultimate destination.

10/8/1915
A circular telegram calls for the registration of all Muslim creditors of the Armenians.

11/8/1915
Instructions are issued that Turkish settlers be sent via Angora, Sivas, and Kayseri to Kharput and others via Konia (Konya) and Adana to Diyarbekir.

11/8/1915
Armenian women married to Turks are deprived of the right of inheritance.

11/8/1915
The last of 84 Armenian intellectuals, who were brought to the Ayash prison and who over the course of the weeks had been taken out in small groups to be murdered at various times, was killed. The longest-held was in prison in Ayash for 105 days.

11/8/1915
The Armenian intellectuals imprisoned in the Sifahdiye Medrese (a Muslim religious school) in Sivas, are taken out from the city and slain. There were 36 extermination centres in the area of Sivas. 5,000 Armenian intellectuals imprisoned in the Gok Medrese and the Sifahdiye Medrese, both Seljuk structures in use as temporary prisons, were taken to these 36 execution centres and slain.

12/8/1915
The end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. First day of the three day holiday of Bairam. No massacres were carried during these three days as it was time off for rest.

12/8/1915
Enver reports that to date 200,000 Armenians had been slain.

12/8/1915
In Aleppo Province 200,000 Armenian deportees are reported in transit to the desert.

12/8/1915
Boghos Nubar, a leading Armenian from Egypt, who had never been in Turkey, but who had been instrumental in Paris in pressing Turkey to introduce reforms in the Armenian provinces, was tried in absentia by a Turkish court martial and sentenced to death for treason.

13/8/1915
The deportation of the Armenians of Izmid (Izmit), Baghchejik (Bardizag), Bursa, and Adabazar begins.

13/8/1915
Instructions are issued to avoid deportees from coming to rest near military installations.
13/8/1915
From the Central Prison of city of Sivas where many Armenian intellectuals, political leaders, and the leading men of the villages surrounding Sivas were imprisoned, 15,000 Armenians were taken out and slain in the 36 extermination centres of the region.

13/8/1915
Instructions are sent out to the committees liquidating the 'abandoned goods' of the Armenians and directions given about methods for depositing the moneys obtained.

14/8/1915
Saturday, the third and last day of Bairam.

16/8/1915
50,000 deportees are observed on the road from Bozanti to Aleppo.

18/8/1915
The New York Times reports of a plan for the destruction of the whole Armenian nation.

19/8/1915
250 Armenians are killed in the city of Urfa in a massacre by Turks inaugurating the first attempt to uproot the Armenians of Urfa. The Armenians of Urfa begin the defense of their city

19/8/1915
Lord Bryce reports that 500,000 Armenians had been murdered in Turkey.

21/8/1915
The War Ministry requisitions for the military forty-one kinds of articles of merchandise from the Armenians.

21/8/1915
A general order is issued for the liquidation of the closed commercial stores of the Armenians.

23/8/1915
A second massacre of Armenians in Urfa is organised.

25/8/1915
The War Ministry requisitions all soap found in the homes and stores of the deported Armenians.

26/8/1915
The War Ministry requisitions for its military supply depots all wood, coal, and copper found in the homes and stores of deported Armenians.

26/8/1915
The Armenian poet, Daniel Varoujan, together with the poet physician Rupen Sevak, and others, are murdered by chetes while incarcerated in the Ayash prison.

26/8/1915
60,000 deported Armenians in the Aleppo area are ordered to leave for Hawran, an Arab district in northern Trans-Jordan.

26/8/1915
The Armenian Catholics in Angora are arrested.

28/8/1915
Instructions are issued forbidding the purchase of property from Armenian deportees.

28/8/1915
The students of the Sanasarian Academy in the city of Sivas are murdered in the town of Gemerak some thirty miles southwest of Sivas.

31/8/1915
Talaat tells the German ambassador, Prince Ernst Hohenlohe-Langenburg, that the Armenian Question no longer exists. Hohenlohe had assumed the German ambassadorship on July 20.

2/9/1915
4,750 Armenians are murdered in Jezire.

3/9/1915
10,000 survivors from the Armenians deported from Bursa and Izmid (Izmit) arrive in Konia (Konya).

3/9/1915
The New York Times reports that Izmid (Izmit) had been put to the torch and the Armenians massacred.

3/9/1915
15,000 Armenian deportees are reported at Eskishehir, 5,000 at Alayund, and 2,000 at Chai.

6/9/1915
In Marsovan (Merzifon), of the 62 Armenian girls who had been saved by American missionaries, on this date only 21 remained. 21 others had been abducted by Turks.

6/9/1915
The Interior Ministry orders all Armenian schools to be placed at the disposal of Turkish authorities.

7/9/1915
Massacres of Armenians are carried out in Yozgat District.

7/9/1915
The War Ministry instructs that the goods requisitioned from the Armenians are to be distributed to the Third, Fourth, and Iraq Armies.
7/9/1915
The second Liquidation Commission in Kayseri is organised.

8/9/1915
5,000 Armenian deportees are reported at Bozanti.

10/9/1915
On the fifty-third day of the Armenian defense in Musa Dagh, 4,058 persons are rescued by three English and one French warship, which transport the survivors to Port Said in Egypt.

11/9/1915
6,000 Armenian deportees in transit left Adana in the direction of Der-el-Zor (Deir el-Zor).

12/9/1915
A Fifth Army notice advises that the Islamisation of Armenian soldiers is the responsibility of the civilian authorities.

13/9/1915
The Turkish Red Crescent Society asks that all cotton goods, and other necessities, be granted to the organisation from the 'abandoned goods' of the Armenian deportees.

14/9/1915
The New York Times reports the murder of 350,000 Armenians.

14/9/1915
The survivors of Musa Dagh arrive in Port Said.

15/9/1915
In a circular letter Talaat explains that the real intention of sending the Armenians to the Der-el-Zor (Deir el-Zor) Desert is to annihilate them.

16/9/1915
Talaat sends instructions by circular telegram to mete out the same fate to the Armenian women and children that had been dealt to the Armenian men.

16/9/1915
A circular dispatch is issued advising caution against the looting of the property of foreigners, with special mention of Singer Sewing Machine Company property.

16/9/1915
Talaat send a telegram to Ali Suad Bey, Governor of Der-el-Zor (Deir el-Zor), explaining his responsibilities.

17/9/1915
A circular telegram instructs all district attorneys to sign and seal the account books cataloguing the properties seized from the Armenians.
18/9/1915
In Aleppo, Nuri and Ali Bey consult about the future massacre of the Armenian remnants in the Syrian Desert at Der-el-Zor (Deir el-Zor).

21/9/1915
A circular telegram authorises the seizure of all Armenian schools and authorises their placement under the control of local education committees.

22/9/1915
Weekly reports on the number of Armenians dead are requested.

22/9/1915
The War Ministry requisitions for the use of the army all wood and coal in the homes and stores of Armenian deportees.

23/9/1915
300 Armenians are killed in a massacre at Urfa.

23/9/1915
11,000 Armenian deportees from 26 different villages are observed at Afiyon-Karahisar.

24/9/1915
The vice-governor of Bolu, Mufid, wires the Interior Ministry that the Armenians of Bolu are about to be deported.

24/9/1915
The local Ittihad Secretary informs the Interior Ministry that 61,000 Armenians had been deported up to this date from Chankri and Angora. He also reports that the Muslims of Angora Province worship the Ittihad party and government for its committed deeds and that the same can be secured in Bolu if the same measures are taken there.

25/9/1915
The Sanitation Division of the War Ministry requisitions all the medical implements and pharmaceuticals held by Armenians.

25/9/1915
24 Armenian schools in Kayseri alone are requisitioned in four days.

26/9/1915
A Law on Abandoned Goods is ratified by the Ottoman Senate legalising ex post facto the looting by the government of the properties of the Armenians.

27/9/1915
The Interior Ministry by circular telegram orders the deportation of all Armenian women, children, and the sick.

28/9/1915
The German ambassador in the United States, Johann Heinrich Count von Bernstorff, suggests that the stories about massacres in Turkey are fabricated.

28/9/1915
A circular telegram advises that all Armenian property now belongs to the Turkish government.

28/9/1915
The governor-general of Diyarbekir Province, Dr. Reshid, reports to the Interior Ministry that more than 120,000 Armenians have been deported from Diyarbekir Province.

29/9/1915
By this date 10,000 Armenian deportees had arrived at Afiyon-Karahisar, 50,000 had arrived at Konia (Konya), 10,000 had arrived at Intille (Intili), while 150,000 were reported at Katma.

30/9/1915
The deportees from Yalova, Angora, and Kastomuni (Kastamoni) are numbered at 250,000.

30/9/1915
U.S. Secretary of State Robert Lansing delivers a note to German Ambassador Bernstorff relating to the massacres of the Armenians.

1/10/1915
The governor-general of Sivas Province, Ahmed Muammer, travels to Amasia and elsewhere to inspect the completion and effect of the massacres in preparation for Talaat's inspection trip.

1/10/1915
600 Armenian orphan boys are Turkified in Herek.

2/10/1915
(General Vehib Pasha reported during the postwar court martial that in September 1915, Behaeddin Shakir assembled and used murdering cutthroats in the Third Army Zone [the six eastern or Armenian provinces of Turkey].)

4/10/1915
The Interior Ministry advises against the need of opening orphanages and prolonging the life of Armenian children.

7/10/1915
By this date the number of deported Armenians still living is estimated at 360,000 minimum, and the number of Armenians dead is estimated at 800,000 minimum.

7/10/1915
$75,000 is collected in the United States for relief for the Armenian deportees.

7/10/1915
In the British House of Lords a general discussion of the Armenian situation takes place. Lord Bryce, Lord Crewe, and Lord Cromer condemn the Turkish barbarities.

8/10/1915
Talaat requests from provincial officials documents proving Armenian 'treason' against Turkey to justify the massacres.

10/10/1915
45 Armenians are arrested in Adrianople (Edirne), and 1,600 Armenians are deported.

12/10/1915
Orders are issued forbidding marriage with Armenian women.

13/10/1915
In Berlin an announcement is made that the story of the Armenian massacres is an Allied fabrication.

15/10/1915
The dean of the Realschule (the German technical school) in Aleppo and German professors there protest against the massacres of the Armenians to the German Foreign Office.

15/10/1915
16,000 Armenian deportees are observed at Afiyon-Karahisar and 80,000 at Konia (Konya).

15/10/1915
6,000 Turkish soldiers stage the final attack on the Armenians defending themselves in Urfa. 400 Turkish troops are killed as Armenians defend to the last.

16/10/1915
Immunity from prosecution is guaranteed to those carrying out the massacres of the Armenians in Der-el-Zor (Deir el-Zor).

16/10/1915
16,000 Armenian deportees from Bursa and Izmid (Izmit) leave Afiyon-Karahisar for Konia (Konya).

16/10/1915
Lord Bryce remarks that Germany could stop the massacres if it wished to do so.

16/10/1915
20,000 Armenian deportees in transit are murdered in the city and environs of Urfa.

18/10/1915
The governor-general of Sivas Province, Ahmed Muammer Bey, inspects the carrying out of his orders for the deportation and destruction of the Armenians in the province, in anticipation of Talaat's inspection trip which occurs shortly thereafter.
18/10/1915
A large public gathering to protest the massacres of the Armenians by the Turkish government is held in the Century Theatre in New York. Rabbi Wise, B. Cochrane, Dr. Barton, and H. Holt are the main speakers.

18/10/1915
Mufti Zade Zia, a Turkish propagandist, writing in New York describes the Armenians as traitors.

22/10/1915
The Turkish Embassy in Washington accuses the Armenians of treason against the Ottoman state.

25/10/1915
Halil Bey of Menteshe, the Vice-President of the Turkish Chamber of Deputies and president of the State Council, becomes Minister of Foreign Affairs.

25/10/1915
Instructions are issued requesting that within one week documents be sent to the Interior Ministry indicting the Armenian people as traitors.

27/10/1915
20,000 Armenian deportees are reported in Konia (Konya) on this date.

28/10/1915
Numerous Armenian families are deported from Adrianople (Edirne) at midnight without prior notice upon the order of Acting Governor-general Zekerie.

28/10/1915
Per earlier instructions sent by Talaat, 80,000 Armenian deportees left the Konia (Konya) station for Bozanti on this date on their way to their 'final destination.' These 80,000 were deportees from cities near Constantinople and from the Armenian communities in the western parts of Turkey.

31/10/1915
Instructions are issued advising that the special measures taken against the Armenians be conducted in places beyond the view of foreigners and especially the American consuls.

31/10/1915
Instructions are issued for the trial by court martial of any Armenian reporting the events of the deportations to any foreigner.

3/11/1915
Doctor Schacht, a German army physician, stationed near the village of Der-el-Zor (Deir el-Zor) village, reports counting 7,000 severed Armenian heads (skulls) in Sabgha District near the Euphrates River.

4/11/1915
The German consul in Mosul reports that Halil Pasha's soldiers had massacred the Armenians north of Mosul and were preparing to massacre the Armenians in the city of Mosul.

5/11/1915
On this date, 10,000 Armenian deportees are reported in Bozanti, 20,000 deportees in Tarsus, 40,000 deportees in Islahiye, and 50,000 deportees in Katma.

5/11/1915
150,000 Armenian deportees are reported scattered between Adana and Aleppo crossing the Amanos Range.

5/11/1915
20,000 Armenian deportees are reported in Adana.

8/11/1915
The Turkish authorities again make preparations to deport the 200,000 Armenians of Constantinople.

11/11/1915
Jemal Pasha, as commander of Syria, seeks to court martial the dean of the Realschule in Aleppo and other German signatories of the protest of October 15 for publicising the Armenian events in Cilicia.

13/11/1915
20,000 Armenian deportees are reported in the Hawran District of Trans-Jordan. (On November 15, 1918, only 450 of this group of 20,000 were reported alive.)

13/11/1915
On this date, 10,000 Armenian deportees were reported in Intille (Intili) and 150,000 deportees were reported in Katma living under terrible conditions, disease-wracked and starving.

14/11/1915
The Anglican and the Orthodox Churches ask U.S. President Woodrow Wilson to pressure the German government to intervene with the Turkish government to stop the massacre of the Armenians.

15/11/1915
The German Charge d'affaires Baron Konstantin von Neurath, welcomes the new ambassador, Paul Count von Wolff-Metternich, who represented Imperial Germany from this date until October 3, 1916. The Charge d'affaires had been in charge of the German diplomatic representation in Turkey since October 2, 1915, when Hohenlohe had departed.

16/11/1915
The fields in Bakche District were reported littered with the corpses of many thousands of Armenians who had starved to death while being deported through here.

17/11/1915
Sir Robert Cecil protests the Turkish charge that the massacres were a response to an Armenian revolt, and charges that they were the result of a premeditated plan on the part of the Turkish government.

18/11/1915
A circular telegram is sent ordering the deportation of Armenian children.

18/11/1915
Talaat leaves Constantinople for an inspection tour of Anatolia. He returns on December 18.

25/11/1915
Up to this date, 500,000 Armenian deportees are estimated to have passed through Bozanti (northwest of Adana).

26/11/1915
1,010 Armenians are deported from the village of Mamure (Mamura) in Adana District.

1/12/1915
The fields around the village of Mamure (Mamura) are reported littered with several thousand corpses of starved or murdered deportees who had been travelling through.

4/12/1915
10,000 Armenian bachelors are deported from the city of Constantinople up to this date. A list is prepared of 70,000 Armenian individuals to be deported from Constantinople.

6/12/1915
A circular telegram instructs that no Armenian is to be left alive in the eastern provinces.

7/12/1915
The German ambassador Wolff-Metternich goes to the Sublime Porte in connection with the massacres and is told that nothing could be discussed until Talaat's return.

9/12/1915
Orders are issued in Aleppo Province for the deportation of 400 Armenian orphans previously placed in an orphanage.

12/12/1915
180,000 Armenian refugees from Turkey who had reached Tiflis (Tbilisi) are reported to be in dire conditions.

14/12/1915
Orders are issued for the killing of Armenian priests.

15/12/1915
A circular telegram clarifies that the purpose of the deportations is annihilation.

16/12/1915
Instructions are issued advising against slowing the deportations and urging the dispatch of the deportees to the desert.

18/12/1915
Talaat returns from Anatolia. German Ambassador Wolff-Metternich is told by Talaat that the Turks are not killing innocents.

22/12/1915
Orders are issued forbidding the acceptance from any Armenian of an application of exemption from the deportations.

25/12/1915
Orders are issued for the deportation of all children except those who did not remember their parents.

29/12/1915
On this date, of the estimated 210,000 refugees who had reached the Caucasus, only 173,000 are reported still living, almost 40,000 having died as a result of privations and disease. Of the remaining 173,000, 105,000 were from Van Province, 48,000 from Bayazid (Bayazit) District, 20,038 from Mush District.

30/12/1915
A circular telegram, as a follow-up on the telegram of December 15, instructs that Armenians desiring to convert to Islam are to be notified that their Islamisation must take place after they reach their final destination. In view of the earlier instructions clarifying the purpose of the deportations as annihilation, the new instructions imply that Armenians are no longer to be allowed to escape destruction for any reason.


1916

1/1/1916
The Armenian deportees concentrated in Suruj District, near Urfa, are sent out toward Der-el-Zor (Deir el-Zor) under very severe winter conditions, completely lacking food, shelter, and suitable clothing.

5/1/1916
Mustafa Abdulhalik Renda seeks to oust Ali Suad, the Arab governor of Der-el-Zor (Deir el-Zor) District for lack of severity by applying directly to Talaat.

8/1/1916
The immediate deportation to the desert of the Armenians working on the railroads or in railway construction is ordered.

11/1/1916
Instructions are sent to prevent foreign officers from photographing dead Armenians.

13/1/1916
U.S. Ambassador Henry Morgenthau during his farewell visit with Talaat is told of the pointlessness of speaking about the Armenians.

15/1/1916
A second circular telegram is issued by the Interior Ministry to prevent photographing of the dead.

17/1/1916
The governor-general of Aleppo is instructed to send the Armenians deported from the northern provinces directly to their final destinations.

23/1/1916
The governor-general of Aleppo informs Talaat that only 10% of the Armenian deportees remain alive, and that measures are being taken to dispose of them also.

23/1/1916
A French translation of a spurious book prepared by Talaat's office charging the Armenians with treason and revolution is published.

24/1/1916
During this period of 47 days, of 486,000 Armenian deportees, 364,500 are reported to have been killed by the Turks or to have died because of the hardships of the deportations.

24/1/1916
The War Ministry orders all Armenian soldiers remaining alive in the Turkish armies to be converted to Islam and to be circumcised.

24/1/1916
The governor-general of Aleppo orders the vice-governor of Aintab to deport the remaining Armenian women in Aintab.

26/1/1916
German Marshal Colmar von der Goltz is appointed Commander of the Eastern Front.

28/1/1916
A circular telegram orders the destruction of orphans.

29/1/1916
50,000 Armenian remnants are reported concentrated at Intille (Intili).

29/1/1916
The Interior Ministry provisionally exempts from deportation Armenians needed for the running of the railways. Their families and children, however, are ordered to be deported to the desert.

29/1/1916
The Interior Ministry orders the deportation of the Armenians constructing roads as soon as the construction work is finished.

31/1/1916
The vice-governor of Aintab District informs the governor-general of Aleppo Province that the Armenian women and children have been handed over to Kurds.

31/1/1916
In a period of two and a half days, 1,029 Armenians die of the rigors of the deportations in the town of Bab, northeast of Aleppo.

3/2/1916
According to Lord Bryce, 486,000 Armenians deportees were still living: 100,000 were to be found between Damascus and Maan, 12,000 at Hama, 20,000 at Homs, 7,000 at Aleppo, 4,000 at Maara, 8,000 at Bab, 5,000 at Munbij (Munbuj), 20,000 at Ras-el-Ain (Ras ul-Ain), 10,000 at Rakka, and 300,000 at Zor.

3/2/1916
A circular telegram instructs that orphans who do not remember their parents be send from Aleppo to Sivas; the rest are to be send to Der-el-Zor (Deir el-Zor) and no expenditures are to be made for their existence.

4/2/1916
Marshal Liman von Sanders replaces Marshal Colmar von der Goltz as Commander of the Caucasian, or Eastern, Front.

9/2/1916
Mustafa Abdulhalik Renda, the governor-general of Aleppo Province, and the Aleppo Commissioner of Police begin to remove 10,000 Armenian deportees from the environs of Aleppo.

9/2/1916
The commander of the labour battalions for the railroad in Cilicia is instructed to deport the wives of the workers and to tell them that their husbands will follow them.

10/2/1916
The deportation commissioner in Aleppo requests funds from the Interior Ministry to cover to the expenses of destroying the orphans.

10/2/1916
Erzberger, a German Reichstag representative, visits Enver and Talaat, to protest the massacres and the excesses of the deportations.

14/2/1916
50,000 Armenians are reported murdered at Intille (Intili).

14/2/1916
On this date 50,000 deportees are reported at Ras-el-Ain (Ras ul-Ain).

16/2/1916
An American application to send relief to the Armenians is rejected by Turkey.

16/2/1916
Talaat sends a circular letter to Urfa, Aintab and Kilis requesting documents to indict the Armenians.

16/2/1916
The Russian Army occupies Erzerum. Only a handful of captive Armenian women are found alive in the entire province.

16/2/1916
Marshal Liman von Sanders claims to have stopped the deportation of many Armenians from Adrianople (Edirne).

16/2/1916
Tahir Jevdet, Enver's brother-in-law, the governor-general of Van Province, travels via Ras-el-Ain (Ras ul-Ain) to Adana, where shortly before he had been appointed governor-general, replacing Ismail Hakki.

16/2/1916
U.S. Secretary of State Robert Lansing asks the German Ambassador Bernstorff to stop the Armenian tragedy.

22/2/1916
Henry Morgenthau arrives in New York.

23/2/1916
Count Wolff-Metternich, the German ambassador in Turkey, visits Talaat and Halil Bey, the newly-appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs, to discuss the Armenian Question with them because of the representations of the United States to the German government.

28/2/1916
A few Armenian soldiers in Turkish Army in Aleppo are forcibly converted to Islam.

1/3/1916
The second deportation of the Armenians of Adrianople (Edirne) begins.

1/3/1916
The Interior Ministry is informed from Aleppo that the Armenians who fled from Mardin had been killed.

4/3/1916
A circular telegram instructs that Armenians of military age are to be put to work only outside inhabited areas.

10/3/1916
A report is send to the Interior Ministry from Aleppo informing that 75% of the Armenians previously in the desert are now dead, and only 25% remain alive.

14/3/1916
Kerim Refi, described as a very savage Rumelian Turk, who is appointed vice-governor of Ras-el-Ain (Ras ul-Ain) arrives from Constantinople. He speeds up the massacres of the Armenian deportees concentrated in Ras-el-Ain (Ras ul-Ain), which had gotten off to a slow start. The massacres extend over a period of five months. Kerim Refi utilises primarily chete forces, including one extremely wild tribe of Circassians.

20/3/1916
Talaat is informed from Aleppo that 95,000 Armenians had died from sickness and other causes in the past week: 30,000 in Ras-el-Ain (Ras ul-Ain), 35,000 in Bab and Meskene, 10,000 in Karluk (Karlik), and 20,000 in Dipsi, Abu Herir (Abuharar), and Hama.

20/3/1916
Instructions are sent to seize the Armenian orphans with the pretext of giving them food and to kill them.

23/3/1916
In Aleppo an attempt is made to force all Armenian soldiers in labour corps to become Muslims and to give up their Armenian names.

29/3/1916
The Turkish government officially rejects foreign relief for the Armenian deportees.

6/4/1916
14,000 Armenians are massacred in Ras-el-Ain (Ras ul-Ain). 24,000 deportees are reported still living in Ras-el-Ain (Ras ul-Ain).

14/4/1916
By this date, 70,000 Armenians are reported massacred at Ras-el-Ain (Ras ul-Ain).

15/4/1916
The Russian Army occupies Trebizond. With the exception of a few Armenian orphans and widows secretly sheltered by Greeks, no Armenians are found in the city.

15/4/1916
A battalion of the Turkish 4th Army Engineers arrives in Ras-el-Ain (Ras ul-Ain) from Damascus to assist in massacring the Armenians.

15/4/1916
19,000 Armenian deportees arrive near the Khabur River.

16/4/1916
The New York Times reports that German Catholics had placed the number of massacred Armenians at 1,000,000, and that they held England at fault for this great crime.

19/4/1916
50 to 100 Armenian deportees are reported to be dying of starvation every day in Meskene, Abu Herir (Abuharar), Sabkha (Sebka), and Hammam (Hamam).

28/4/1916
The Turkish government again rejects foreign relief for the Armenians.

3/5/1916
According to The New York Times, before the fall of Erzerum, 15,000 Armenians had been massacred in the nearby town of Mamakhatun, west of the city of Erzerum.

10/5/1916
Shaikh-ul-Islam (Turkish religious chief) Khairi resigns under pressure. Musa Kiazim, a war criminal, succeeds him as Shaikh-ul-Islam and as Minister of Pious Foundations.

12/5/1916
1,400 Armenian orphans are distributed to various places by the Ittihad Committees.

21/5/1916
News is received concerning the fate of 19,000 deportees in one caravan, of whom 16,500 are reported killed on the banks of the Khabur River, northeast of Der-el-Zor (Deir el-Zor), and 2,500 survivors are reported having arrived at Mosul.

22/5/1916
72,000 Armenian deportees are reported in Der-el-Zor (Deir el-Zor) District.

24/5/1916
The New York Times reports that 80,000 Armenians had died of starvation around Damascus.

30/5/1916
60,000 Armenian deportees are reported scattered between Hejaz District in central Arabia and Aleppo in northern Syria.

3/6/1916
The report of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions on the massacres of Erzerum is published.
7/6/1916
All the Armenians remaining in the Aleppo area are ordered to leave for Der-el-Zor (Deir el-Zor).

14/6/1916
The Arab governor of Der-el-Zor (Deir el-Zor) District, Ali Suad, is sent to Baghdad for refusing to carry out the extermination of the deportees. He is replaced by Salih Zeki, the former vice-governor of Everek in Kayseri Province, reputed for his cruelty.

20/6/1916
The Armenians working in labour corps in Sivas are instructed to convert to Islam. At least 95% refuse.

25/6/1916
7,000 Armenian soldiers stationed in Sivas are imprisoned for nine days in the old Seljuk buildings where formerly the civilian Armenian leaders and intellectuals had been imprisoned before being killed.

30/6/1916
Ambassador von Wolff-Metternich reports to the German Chancellor that Ittihad is devouring the remaining Armenian refugees.

30/6/1916
On the argument that those who refuse are going to be deported into the desert again, the proposal is made to the Armenian labour battalions in Damascus and to the civilian deportees that they become Muslims. Very few Armenians accept.

1/7/1916
Lord Bryce submits to Lord Grey, British Secretary of Foreign Affairs, his book on The Treatment of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire.

5/7/1916
The massacre of the 7,000 Armenian troops imprisoned in Sivas begins. The massacre lasts for twenty-one days with an average of 1,000 killed every three days.

6/7/1916
The Russian Army occupies Bayburt and Erzinjan.

10/7/1916
The U.S. Congress proposes a day of commemoration for the collection of funds for the Armenians.

15/7/1916
The Turkish Army on the Caucasian Front loses 60,000 men to starvation, disease and other causes, leaving effectively only 20,000. Marshal Liman von Sanders attributes these losses to the destruction of Turkish agricultural production because of the deportations of the Armenians.

19/7/1916
The U.S. House of Representatives adopts the resolution introduced in the U.S. Senate establishing a day of commemoration for the Armenian victims.

23/7/1916
In order to further the Islamisation and Turkification of the Armenian remnants in the Hawran District, all the Armenian clerics found there are murdered by the Turks.

23/7/1916
The proposal is made to the Armenian military doctors in Sivas that they become Muslims. Almost all refuse and are at once killed.

1/8/1916
The Interior Ministry abolishes the Armenian Patriarchate and the legal rights of the Armenian community (the Millet Ermeni) on the grounds that there was no Armenian community left in Turkey.

7/8/1916
Newly-appointed U.S. Ambassador to Turkey, Abram E. Elkus, leaves for Constantinople.

8/8/1916
15,000 Armenian deportees are removed from Aleppo to the desert.

12/8/1916
The Turkish government again refuses aid to the Armenian deportees by a neutral commission.

13/8/1916
Salih Zeki, the governor of Der-el-Zor (Deir el-Zor), informs Talaat that he is changing the location of the deportees.

14/8/1916
200,000 Armenian deportees are reported killed in massacres by this date in the Zor District, at a delta formed by the juncture of the Khabur and Euphrates River near Suwar (Suvar), Marrat (Marat), and Elbusayra.

3/9/1916
A five member commission of Turks arrives in the Hawran District to convert the Armenian deportees to Islam.

5/9/1916
The government orders all Armenian orphans to be given Turkish names.

7/9/1916
60,000 more Armenian deportees are reported massacred in the Der-el-Zor (Deir el-Zor) area.

16/9/1916
Turkish authorities enter American consular offices to search for British records.

27/9/1916
The German Cabinet, in its 86th session, discusses the Armenian massacres.

3/10/1916
Count Wolff-Metternich leaves his post as ambassador to Turkey, recalled by the German General Staff at the request of Enver because he had protested against the Armenian massacres. Wilhelm Radowitz is interim ChargÈ d'affaires for Germany until November 16 and the arrival of the new ambassador, Richard von Kuhlmann.

4/10/1916
Wilhelm Radowitz reports to the German Chancellor Theobald von Bethman Hollweg that of the two million Armenians in Turkey, one and half million had been deported. Of these 1,175,000 were dead; 325,000 were still living.

5/10/1916
The Turkish government confiscates by a provisional law all the real estate of the Armenians.

8/10/1916
U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, acting on the resolution of Congress, proclaims these two days "Armenian Relief Days."

11/11/1916
A highly secret Ittihad convention is convened in Constantinople to review existing policy toward the Armenians and to decide on a future course of action.

16/11/1916
The appointment of the new German ambassador in Constantinople, Richard von Khlmann, who serves until July 1917, when he is promoted to the office of Foreign Minister.

4/12/1916
Omer Naji, an inspector-general of the Ittihad Committee, is reported to have announced that Ittihad is seeking to organise a purely Turkish state.


1917

4/1/1917
Mr. Goppert of the German Embassy, visits Enver, Talaat and Foreign Minister Halil to convey that forcible Islamisation had no connection with military necessity or the security of the state and must be stopped immediately.

4/2/1917
Talaat becomes the Grand Vizier of Turkey.

14/2/1917
Halide Hanum, the Turkish female author, and head of an orphanage established in Syria, receives 70 Armenian orphans in her orphanage in order to Turkify them.

15/2/1917
Another group of 70 Armenian orphans are sent to an orphanage in Lebanon to be Turkified.

5/3/1917
The government distributes by rail to various villages and towns 400 Armenian orphans from Aleppo.

5/3/1917
350 Armenian orphans from an Armenian orphanage in Syria are given to surviving relatives, no matter how distantly related, in order to keep them from falling into the hands of the Turks.

11/3/1917
Allied forces occupy Baghdad.

15/3/1917
20,000 Armenians in the city of Aleppo are reported in extreme distress.

15/3/1917
The Turkish government declines American offers of aid to the Armenian survivors.

20/3/1917
In Aleppo District, 45,000 Armenian deportees are reported living in dire conditions. Of these, 10,000 were women, while the rest were mainly orphaned children.

23/3/1917
The governor-general of Damascus, Huseyin Kiazim, reports that there are 60,000 Armenian deportees in Damascus District, of which only 10% were capable of doing any kind of work.

23/3/1917
10,000 Armenian deportees are reported in the city of Damascus, and 30,000 Armenian deportees are reported in Homs and Hama.

26/3/1917
Ernst E. Cristoffel, a German missionary in Malatia, who witnessed the massacres and deportations, estimates that 1,000,000 Armenians had been murdered.

1/4/1917
12,000 Armenian deportees are murdered in Buseira, near Der-el-Zor (Deir el-Zor).

14/4/1917
The Turkish government orders all surviving Armenians in Urfa District to be Turkified.

20/4/1917
Turkey breaks relations with the United States.

1/6/1917
The Turkish government orders the Turkification and Islamisation of the surviving Armenian Catholics.

1/9/1917
The appointment of the new German ambassador in Constantinople, Johann Heinrich Count on Bernstorff (former ambassador to Washington). Bernstorff served until October 27, 1918.

5/11/1917
The Interior Ministry orders the deportation of all Armenian employees on the railroads.

27/11/1917
President Woodrow Wilson urges former ambassador Henry Morgenthau to write a book based on his experiences.

9/12/1917
Allied forces occupy Jerusalem.


1918

9/1/1918
The Aleppo Police Department obtains the list of all the Armenian labour battalion workers constructing the Aleppo Normal School for the selection of those to be killed.

28/1/1918
The German General Hans Friedrich von Seeckt, at the time Chief of Staff of the Turkish Army, is instructed to prevent Turkish atrocities against the Armenians of the Caucasus, since the Russian armies had fallen apart in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution and the Turks were advancing almost unopposed.

27/2/1918
The Interior Ministry requests without delay the lists of Armenian employees on the railways.

3/3/1918
The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk is signed by Russia, Turkey, and Germany. The hostilities with Russia are officially ended. Talaat declares that he will grant amnesty to the Armenians.

12/3/1918
Enver orders the killing of all civilian Armenians over five years of age and remaining Armenians in the Turkish military within 48 hours. The Germans attempt to stop the Turks from committing this massacre.

12/3/1918
Turkish forces reoccupy Erzerum.

26/3/1918
The governor-general of Aleppo Province sends a list of the Armenian railway employees to the Military Commissioner for Railways.

1/4/1918
The Military Commissioner for Railways sends a reply to Osman Bedri, the governor-general of Aleppo Province relating to the destruction of the Armenian railway workers, and on the same day the list is delivered to the Aleppo Police Department, which was serving as the concentration and transit centre for the deportations and massacres.

5/4/1918
Turkish forces reoccupy Van.

13/4/1918
Turkish forces occupy Kars.

14/4/1918
The registration book of all the remaining Armenian construction workers (the labour battalions of the Turkish Army) is sent to the Aleppo Police Department.

15/4/1918
The Turkish government announces that upon his return from the Peace Conference at Brest-Litovsk, Talaat will grant amnesty to the Armenians in Turkey. Practically, it is an empty gesture for the benefit of the Europeans, as most surviving Armenians were living outside of Turkey proper and those still left in Turkey were being systematically destroyed.

24/4/1918
Enver returns from Batum to Constantinople and reports that he will be issuing instructions for the return of 'peaceful' Armenians.

28/4/1918
Turkey formally recognise the Transcaucasian Federative Republic consisting of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. (The Federation dissolves on May 28.)

28/5/1918
An Armenian Republic is proclaimed in Russian Transcaucasia.

9/6/1918
Hinderburg wires Enver asking Turkish forces to evacuate all Caucasian areas except Kars, Ardahan, and Batum. The Turks ignore the demand. Local massacres are reported throughout the occupied areas.

24/6/1918
2,000 remaining Armenians are massacred in Kara-Kilise in Turkey.

28/6/1918
The Turkish government condemns 14,000 Armenians to hard labour to destroy these remnants.

28/6/1918
Sultan Mehmet V Reshad, who had been a complete a rubber-stamp for the Ittihadists, dies. He is succeeded by Mehmet VI Vahideddin.

5/7/1918
Avedis Aharonian, President of the Armenian Delegation, meets with German ambassador to Constantinople, Count Bernstorff, on behalf of the Armenian Republic.

24/7/1918
The Armenians are supposedly granted amnesty, and Ismail Janbolat, the Deputy Minister of the Interior, is given charge of the return of the Armenian deportees.

29/7/1918
Hinderburg sends a message to Enver urging restraint in the treatment of the Armenians in the Caucasus.

15/9/1918
The three-day massacre by Turkish military forces under the command of Nuri Pasha (Enver's younger brother) and Halil Pasha (Enver's uncle) results in the death of 30,000 Armenian civilians in the city of Baku.

19/9/1918
Allied forces open a large-scale offensive on the Syrian Front, aided by an Armenian Legion recruited from Armenian colonies throughout the world.

1/10/1918
Allied forces capture Damascus.

2/10/1918
Bulgaria signs an armistice with the Allies. The Armenian refugees in Bulgaria are now safe as the Bulgarian government stops returning them to Turkey.

8/10/1918
Allied forces capture the city of Beirut.

8/10/1918
The Ittihad Cabinet of Enver, Jemal, and Talaat resigns. All three prepare to flee the country.

26/10/1918
Allied forces occupy the city of Aleppo. With the arrival of the British and French armies and the Armenian Legion, 125,000 remnants of the deported Armenians are rescued from the desert

29/10/1918
The Ittihad Central Bureau resigns and the Party decides secretly to reorganise as the Tejeddut Firkasi (Regeneration Party). Talaat, Enver, Osman Bedri, Behaeddin Shakir, and more than thirty other Ittihadist ringleaders decide to flee to Germany.

29/10/1918
120,000 Turkish gold pounds and jewellery is transferred from the Ittihad Party to the Tejeddut Party, the newly-organised front of the Ittihadists. This money and jewellery was just a small part of the property of the Armenians misappropriated by the Ittihad Party.

29/10/1918
Dr. Nazim takes with him to Germany 65,000 Turkish gold pounds and 600,000 Turkish gold pounds of valuation in jewellery from the so-called abandoned goods of the Armenians.

30/10/1918
An armistice is signed at Mudroa between Turkey and the Allies. The Armistice agreement makes provisions for the release of Armenian internees and the return of the Armenian deportees to their homes.

1/11/1918
The Ittihad Party, with 120 delegates attending, convenes under the guise of the Tejeddut Party.

2/11/1918
Talaat, Enver, Jemal flee Turkey on a German freighter.

3/11/1918
The second session of the Ittihad convention as the Tejeddut Party is held under the chairmanship of Ismail Janbolat Bey, Talaat's former assistant. An Executive Committee of twenty-one members is elected.

4/11/1918
The third session of the Ittihad convention instructs its provincial branches to go underground and announces their abolishment.

5/11/1918
All Ittihadist clubs in Anatolia are closed. The units go underground.

11/11/1918
A general Armistice is declared between the Allies and the Central Powers.

11/12/1918
Talaat, Enver, and Jemal are summoned by the Fifth Committee of the Turkish Parliament to appear for an inquiry within ten days.


1919

1/2/1919
A court martial to address war crimes in convened in Constantinople.

6/2/1919
Dr. Reshid, former governor-general of Diyarbekir Province and a major war criminal, commits suicide.

26/2/1919
During the tenth session of the court martial on the Yozgat massacres, testimony was presented that the local gendarmery commander, Tevfik, had purchased 50,000 Turkish gold pounds-worth of Armenian-owned property.

5/3/1919
The eleventh session of the trial on the Yozgat massacres is held.

8/3/1919
An imperial decree is published in Constantinople calling for the court martial of the Ittihadist leaders.

13/3/1919
The Grand Vizier, Ahmet Tevfik Pasha, attempts to justify the massacres on the basis of false accusation against the Armenians.

24/3/1919
The twelfth session taking testimony on the massacres at Yozgat is held.

30/3/1919
During the Yozgat trial, shots are fired in the courtroom in an attempt to disrupt the court martial.

5/4/1919
The fifth session of the trial on the Trebizond massacres is held.

12/4/1919
Kemal Bey, the chief culprit of the Yozgat massacres, sentenced to death by the military tribunal, is publicly hanged.

15/4/1919
The court martial investigates the role of the Ittihad Party in the Armenian massacres.

4/5/1919
The second session of the tribunal investigating the Ittihad Party reveals that the Ittihad cabinet ministers were simultaneously serving as executive members of the Ittihad Party.

5/5/1919
The thirteenth session of the trial on the Trebizond massacres is held.

6/5/1919
The third session of the tribunal on the Ittihad Party reveals that the original Convention of the Ittihad had consisted of only 300 members.

8/5/1919
The fourth session of the Ittihad tribunal is held.

8/5/1919
180,000 Turkish gold pounds are requisitioned from the Tejeddut Party.

8/5/1919
The fifth session of the Ittihad tribunal and the trial of the Young Turk propagandist, Zia Gokalp, is held.

11/5/1919
The sixteenth session of the trial on the Trebizond massacres is held.

15/5/1919
The eighteenth session of the trial on the Trebizond massacres is held.

19/5/1919
A mass meeting of 100,000 persons organised by Constantinople Police Department protests the May 14 landing of the Greek Army at Smyrna.
19/5/1919
Mustafa Kemal lands at Samsun on assignment from the Ministry of War and the Grand Vizier in Constantinople as inspector-general of central Anatolia. Kemal begins organising new Turkish armies to oppose the Allies. Former Ittihadist leaders join forces with Kemal.

28/5/1919
On the first anniversary of independence, the Republic of Armenia declares the unification of Caucasian and Turkish Armenia.

10/6/1919
Talaat, Enver, Jemal, and Dr. Nazim, charged with war crimes by the Turkish court martial, are condemned to death in absentia.

1/7/1919
The Constantinople branch of the Ittihad Party plans to send Javid, Dr. Adnan, and his wife Halide Hanum, as their delegates to the Congress convened in Sivas by Mustafa Kemal. To escape trial for war crimes, Javid had been in hiding in Turkey for eight months following the Armistice.

3/8/1919
The trial on the Kharput massacres begins. Halil Pasha is heard as a witness. Evidence is introduced revealing that Behaeddin Shakir used two separate ciphers, one for use with the Sublime Porte, the other for use with the War Ministry.

13/8/1919
Halil Pasha and Kuchuk Talaat, both accused war criminals, escape from Constantinople to join Kemal's forces.

2/11/1919
Jelal Bey (the former governor-general of Aleppo Province until May 1915, when he had resigned in protest against the order to exterminate the Armenians, whereupon he had been transported to Konia (Konya), where he had remained in office until the end of 1916) was appointed Governor-general of Aleppo Province again.

1/12/1919
Francois Georges-Picot, former French High Commissioner in Syria, and Mustafa Kemal hold a secret meeting in Sivas concerning the status of Cilicia. Kemal demands that the French Army including the Armenian volunteer forces serving with it be withdrawn. Picot agrees, leaving defenseless the Armenian survivors in Cilicia, who had returned home from their ordeals in the desert.


1920 and later

19/1/1920
The Allies formally recognise the independence of Armenia.

19/1/1920
Tried in Constantinople in absentia, Behaeddin Shakir is sentenced to death and Dr. Nazim to fifteen years hard labour.

21/1/1920
Turkish Nationalist forces affiliated with Mustafa Kemal attack Marash.

5/2/1920
10,000 Armenians are massacred in Marash.

1/4/1920
The Ittihadists distribute relief funds to party members in hiding in Turkey accused of crimes and to those who had fled to foreign countries.

22/4/1920
The United States of America officially recognises the Independent Republic of Armenia.

23/4/1920
The Ottoman government in Constantinople announces that it will seek a new review by higher judicial bodies of the sentences against those tried by the courts martial.

25/4/1920
United States President Woodrow Wilson receives an invitation from the San Remo Conference to determine the borders of Armenia.

1/5/1920
The French and Turkish Nationalists agree to an armistice.

22/6/1920
Jemal Oguz, the murderer of the poet Daniel Varoujan and other Armenian intellectuals, escapes from custody with the assistance of the Military Governor of Constantinople.

29/6/1920
Five war criminals tried for the massacres in Erzinjan, all of whom had conveniently escaped from custody, are sentenced in absentia.

5/8/1920
The court martial condemns to death Nusret, vice-governor of Bayburt District.

10/8/1920
The Treaty of Sèvres is signed. According to articles 226, 227, 228, 229, 230 pertaining to the massacres, the Turkish government promises to hand over all documents and any persons requested by the Allies. Articles 88 and 89 recognise Armenia as a free and independent state.

15/8/1920
The Turkish Nationalist and Bolshevik forces form an alliance.

22/11/1920
President Woodrow Wilson presents his delineation of the borders of Armenia. A week later Armenia is partitioned by Turkish Nationalist forces and Sovietized by Russian Bolsheviks.

25/11/1920
Of 10,000 Armenians living in Hadjin (Hajen), only 480 survive a massacre by Turkish Nationalist forces.

30/12/1920
The trial on the massacres in Mosul begins.

3/1/1921
An acquittal is handed down for those accused of the massacre in Adrianople (Edirne).

18/1/1921
The Ottoman government abolishes the courts martial.

20/1/1921
The Turkish Nationalist Pact demands the inclusion of Armenia, Smyrna, and Thrace in Turkish territory.

21/1/1921
The trial on Erzerum massacres is reviewed by a new and higher court.

21/1/1921
Naim Jevad, an accused war criminal, is sent by Enver as an envoy from Moscow to Constantinople.

8/2/1921
Mustafa Pasha, presiding judge of the court martial which had condemned Nusret to death on August 5, 1920, was acquitted of the charge of having joined in a conspiracy against the government after six months of imprisonment and a trial. The trial signals the beginning of the reversal of the policy on bringing the Ittihadists to justice.

11/2/1921
After a ten-month siege, Aintab capitulates to Turkish Nationalist forces.

17/2/1921
The trial on the Keghi massacres is held.

18/2/1921
Some of the war criminals are acquitted.

24/2/1921
The investigation of the Der-el-Zor (Deir el-Zor) massacres begins.

10/3/1921
The investigation of the Der-el-Zor (Deir el-Zor) massacres continues.

15/3/1921
Talaat is assassinated in Berlin by an Armenian student, Soghomon Tehlirian. Talaat had been condemned to death by the Turkish court martial on July 11, 1919. (In 1943, the Turkish government removed the remains of Talaat from Nazi Germany and enshrined them with great ceremony on Liberty Hill in Constantinople.)

1/6/1921
The German Foreign Office obstructs the former German Consul at Aleppo, Rossler, from testifying in the Berlin court trying Talaat's assassin.

2/6/1921
Tehlirian's trial is held in Berlin.

3/6/1921
Tehlirian is acquitted.

6/12/1921
Said Halim is assassinated in Rome.

7/4/1922
Jemal Azmi, the governor-general of Trebizond during the massacres, and Behaeddin Shakir are assassinated in Berlin.

25/7/1922
Jemal Pasha, the former Minister of the Marine and the Fifth Army commander in Syria, is assassinated in Tiflis (Tbilisi).

26/8/1922
Anarchy spreads in Smyrna as the Turks press in on the city.

9/9/1922
The advance guard of the Turkish Army enters Smyrna and pillages Armenian and Greek homes and stores. Armenians and Greeks are killed in the thousands. Religious institutions, including the Armenian Prelacy in Smyrna, are ransacked.

13/9/1922
The burning of Smyrna by the Turks. Within 24 hours, 50,000 houses, 24 churches, 28 schools, 5 consulates, 7 clubs, 5 banks, and an unknown number of stores and warehouses are destroyed.

20/11/1922
The first Lausanne Conference is convened.

4/2/1923
The Lausanne Conference deadlocks over the Armenian Question.

23/4/1923
The second Lausanne Conference is convened.

24/7/1923
Treaty of Lausanne signed by Turkey and the Allies excludes all mention of Armenia or the Armenians. The new Turkish Nationalist state is extended international recognition. The Ottoman Empire goes out of existence.

23/8/1923
The Turkish Nationalist congress, known as the Grand National Assembly, meeting in Ankara ratifies the Lausanne Treaty. The Allies begin to evacuate the following day from all places in Turkey that had been occupied in accordance with the terms of the Armistice of October 30, 1918.

29/10/1923
The Republic of Turkey is proclaimed by the Turkish Grand National Assembly with Mustafa Kemal as its President.

22/8/1939
While addressing his military commanders at Obersalzburg, a week before the invasion of Poland, and the start of World War II, Adolph Hitler speaks of his orders "to kill without pity or mercy all men, women, and children of Polish race or language," and concludes his remarks by saying: "WHO STILL TALKS NOWADAYS OF THE EXTERMINATION OF THE ARMENIANS?"

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