Forced Migration and Mortality

in the Ottoman Empire

An Annotated Map
Justin McCarthy
Professor of History at the University of Louisville

Copyright 2010 by Justin McCarthy

Printed by the Turkish Coalition of America

Forced Migration and Mortality in the Ottoman Empire

The War of 1877-78
The 1877 Russian invasion of Ottoman
Europe led to the flight of 515,000 and the deaths of
288,000 Bulgarian Muslims, nearly all Turks. Only 46%
of the Bulgarian Muslims remained. In exchange,
187,000 Bulgarians from what remained in Ottoman
Europe went to Bulgaria.
By percentage, the worst losses in the period
took place among the Muslims in regions taken by
Montenegro, Serbia and Romania. In the lands taken by
Montenegro all of the Muslims were gone, in the lands
taken by Serbia, 91% (119,000) were gone, in the lands
taken by Romania 83% (152,000) were gone. Bosnian
Muslims fled during a Serbian revolt in 1875 and after a
failed Muslim revolt against Austrian occupation of
Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1881-2.

Greece

E
GREEC
ANIA
ALB

In 1790 the Ottoman Empire in Europe

contained the lands south of the Danube River, Bosnia,
and most of Romania. Much of that land
was to be lost through Great Power
intervention, mainly by defeating the
AUSTRIAN
Ottomans in war. Russia forced the
EMPIRE
independence of Serbia, Romania, and
Bulgaria. The Great Powers in concert
BO
ROMANIA
SN
forced the creation of an independent
IA SERBIA
Greece. The Austrians seized Bosnia. By
1912, the new Balkan countries were strong
BULGARIA
enough to defeat the Ottomans themselves.
Only a small wedge of Europe, Eastern
THRACE
Thrace, remained to the Empire.

The small Muslim population was

largely expelled from Serbia in the early
1800s, but the effective beginning of the
Turkish exodus from Southeastern Europe
1800
came in Greece. After the Greek Rebellion of
1822 to 1830 all of the Turks of the new
Greek Kingdom were gone; all had either migrated or
died. When Greece expanded to the north in 1880,
70,000 more Turks left the occupied territories for the
Ottoman Empire. By the time Greece formally annexed
Crete in 1913, all but a few of the Cretan Turks had been
expelled.

Of the Christian peoples, it was the Bulgarians

who lost most: 100,000 Bulgarians fled to Bulgaria from
Ottoman Thrace and from the lands conquered by the
other Balkan countries. It was the Muslims, however,
who most suffered. 27% of the Turks of Ottoman
Europe died and 18% were surviving refugees. No one
counted the numbers lost in the great slaughter and
dispossession of Albanians in the West.

Turkish War of Independence

RUSSIAN EMPIRE

An unknown number of Greeks,

perhaps 100,000, went from Western
Anatolia to Greece before World War I
CIR
began, affected by anti-Greek economic
CRIMEA
CA
SS
pressure after the Balkan Wars. Aided
IA
especially by the British, the Greek Army
invaded Western Anatolia in 1919. They
immediately began attacks on Turkish
ARMENIA
villages and cities, ultimately forcing 1.2
million Turks from their homes in Western
ANATOLIA
Anatolia and an unknown number from
Thrace (what had remained of Ottoman
OTTOMAN EMPIRE
Europe after the Balkan Wars). The
IRAN
Turkish Nationalists, led by Mustafa
CRETE
Kemal, defeated the Greeks by 1922. It was
then the turn of the Greeks to take flight. A
post-war agreement exchanged the Greeks
of Turkey (excepting Istanbul) for the
Turks of Greece (excepting Eastern Thrace). 850,000
The Balkan Wars
Greeks were exchanged for 480,000 Turks. 530,000
Turks and 310,000 Greeks had died.
At the onset of the Balkan Wars, the Muslim
population of Ottoman Europe was slightly over
50%Turks in the East, Albanians in the West.
Population numbers, however, were not a concern to
IJAN

The West

Serbia, Montenegro, Greece, and Bulgaria. Each

coveted the parts of Ottoman Europe that they viewed
as their ancestral homelands. The problem was that
each desired the same property. They joined together to
defeat the Ottomans in the first Balkan War, then
fought among themselves for the spoils. Serbia,
Montenegro, Greece, and Romania attacked Bulgaria.
The Ottomans also attacked Bulgaria to reclaim some
land in Europe.

AZE
RBA

From 1790 to 1923 more than 7 million persons were

forced from their homes in the Balkans, the Caucasus,
and Anatolia. At the same time, another six million
were counted among the dead, and many more dead
were never counted. It was one of the worst human
disasters in history, but is little known today. When the
suffering of the time has been described, all too often
only dispossessed and dead Christians have been
considered. Yet the greatest mortality and exile were
experienced by Muslim peoplesTurks, Circassians,
Kurds, and others. All shared in the suffering in that
terrible time.

The East
The Russian Empire expanded to the south.
When it annexed the Crimea in 1779 approximately
100,000 Crimean Tatars (Turks who had lived there for
centuries) fled the Crimea and surrounding areas for
the Ottoman Empire. Immediately after the Crimean
War, they were joined by a further 300,000 Crimean
Tatars and an unknown number of Nogay Tatars. Their
place was taken by Christian subjects of the Tsar.
In the East, Russian conquest was to lead to a
great exchange of Muslim and Christian populations,
with much suffering that was to continue until 1920. In
1800, the area that is todays Armenia, Central Georgia,
and Azerbaijan was a loosely governed part of the
Persian Empire. The Ottoman Empire controlled a
small area to the North of todays Turkish border. The
Russians took the region in a series of annexations and
conquests from 1801 to 1829. A large number of Azeri
Turks fled to Iranian Azerbaijan in 1806-7. 20,000
Turks fled the Erivan Province (todays Armenian
Republic) in 1827-9. Their place was taken by
Armenians from Iran and the Ottoman Empire, drawn
by the availability of land taken from the exiled Turkish
farmers and Russian promises of freedom from taxes.

Circassians and Abhazians

The Russians continued and expanded their
policy of forcing Muslims out of conquered lands. 1.2
million Circassians and Abhazians, Muslim inhabitants
of the Eastern Black Sea region, were expelled to the
Ottoman Empire in the 1860s. One-third of them
subsequently died, mainly of starvation and disease.
During and immediately after the Russo-Turkish War
of 1877-78, 78,000 Turks left conquered lands in
Northeastern Anatolia, their places taken by 20,000
Armenians from the Ottoman East.

World War I
Armenian rebels had begun to take action
against Ottoman troops and officials and Muslim
civilians before the Ottomans entered World War I. In
the first months of the war, civilian populations moved
to cities and other safe places. During the war,
Armenian units attached to the Russian Army and
guerilla units of Ottoman Armenians spearheaded the

Russian invasion of Anatolia. The way in which the war

was fought maximized civilian suffering. In 1914 and
1915 the Russians and Armenians invaded Eastern
Anatolia. The invasion was accompanied by wholesale
slaughter of Turks and Kurds. When the Russians were
briefly defeated and forced to retreat, 300,000
Armenians fled to Russia and an unknown number to
Iran. Until the Russian Revolution freed the survivors,
the Russians allowed few of the Armenians to return to
their homes. Great numbers, perhaps half, of the
Armenian refugees starved or died of disease. By 1916,
the Russians had returned, forcing the flight of more
Turks and Kurds. From 1915 to 1916 more than a
million Muslims had been forced westwards. Like the
Armenians, they starved or were killed by disease. 62%
of the Muslims of Van Province, for example, died.
The Ottoman Government responded to the
perceived threat from its Armenian population by
relocating 440,000 Armenians to Syria and, to a lesser
extent, to Iraq.
At wars end, Armenians took control of
Erzurum Province, but the Ottoman Army defeated
them. Armenians escaped to the Northeast, killing
Turks and destroying villages. In addition, by 1920,
220,000 Turks had fled the Armenian Republic for
Turkey. The French took Cilicia (South-central
Anatolia, the Adana region) after the Armistice.
Armenians, especially those who had been relocated to
Syria, moved into the region and attacked the Turks
there. Many Turks fled the Armenians and the French.
Others began a successful military campaign that drove
out the French. The Armenians followed the French
retreat. In all, 30,000 Armenians and an unknown
number of Turks were refugees.

The Toll
The death toll in these wars and dislocations
was tremendous. The dead on all sides were mainly
civilians, and many more died from disease and
starvation than were directly killed by their enemies.
But consideration should be given to the calamity that
struck even those refugees who survived. It was a life of
hunger in refugee camps or begging on the
streetshomes and farms gone forever. Many made
new lives, but saw them ruined again. A Turkish farmer

who was forced out of Bulgaria at age 20 in 1878 might

have fled to Ottoman Europe, where he survived,
perhaps even prospered. Again forced out in 1912, he
might have lived as a penniless settler near zmir. In his
old age, disaster struck again as he was forced to flee
from zmir in 1919. Most likely he would have left dead
family and friends behind in each place, killed by the
invaders who drove him from his home. Much the same
story could have been told of Greeks or Armenians.

The Map
The size of the arrows on the main map
indicates the relative size of the migrations. Placement
of the arrows was in some places dictated by the
necessity of placing many arrows in a small space, and
thus is not geographically perfect. For example, the
arrow for the exile of Turks from Armenia in 1918-20
should have pointed further south, were it not necessary
to also include an arrow for the Armenian exiles to
Armenia. Even approximations of many of the forced
migrations are unknown. Rough estimates are reflected
in the size of arrows.
Anatolian Wars in the small map of wartime
mortality shows the percentage deaths of Muslims,
Greeks, and Armenians. Muslim percentages are for the
war zones in Eastern and Western Anatolia. Wartime
migration, however, makes it impossible to give
Armenian and Greek deaths only in the war zones.
Those figures are for Anatolia as a whole, but they
roughly correspond to the percentages for Muslims.
The map does not include many migrants that
left their homelands looking for work, were attracted by
offers of free land and relief from taxes, or simply did
not wish to live under their home governments rule.
These would have included the Armenians whom the
Russians attracted to their Caucasus conquests after
1829 to take the place of expelled Turks and the Greeks
and Armenians who went to America seeking a better
life. It would have included the Turks who continued to
leave the Balkans and Russia up until the end of the
twentieth century. It also would have included the great
number of all groups who moved in peace time across
ever-changing borders to escape persecution or simply
to live with their fellows. Had these been included, the
map would have been a mass of small arrows.

FORCED DISPLACEMENTS OF 5 MILLION MUSLIMS

AND 1.9 MILLION CHRISTIANS, 1770-1923

Vienna

Budapest

AUSTRIA

RUSSIA
1

0s :
86

No

rs *
ata
T
y
ga

1912-3: Greeks 20,000

*
ians

Salonica

Tur
ks

191

9-22

41
0,
00

8:
77-

Trabzon

-81:

Ankara

mil.

1915-6: Arme
n

li
us

6
89

nM

ta

re

1921: Armenians 30,000

s*

rk

40,000
ns 4

Konya
Adana

C
8:

: Turks
Kurds

1 mil.

Erivan

0
00

0,

s2

0
00
,
T
:
0
0
-9
27
s3
18
n
a
ni
me
r
:A
1915-6
15
: Kurd
9
s*
1
Van 1915

Diyarbakr

ia

1.2
s
k
r
2: Tu
2
9
191

1915-6

1912 Border

1914 Border

20,00

OT TOMAN
EMPIRE

Baku

1918-9: Armenians *

rmenians *
8-9: A
191

18

1915-6: Kurds *

zmir

Tu
ms

70

Erzurum

Sivas

1922-3: Turks 480,000

1912 Balkan
States Borders

rks

Tu

220,000
: Turks

1918-20

0
,00

k
ur

1914-23: Greeks 850,000

1830 Border

40,000

s
enian
: Arm
1877-8

1877

1821-30: Turks *

rks

Bursa

Athens

1800 Border

: Tu

z
: La
-82
78
8
1

Turk

s 40,0
0

Manastr

19124:

Tiflis

18

:A
rm
en
ian
s

90
s:
Ar
me

nia

ns

19

18

eri
Az
- 9:

Tu

,0
40
rk s

00

Azeri T
urks *

Edirne

0
,0

Alba
n

Bul

50

2- 3 :

ns

191

0
s 190,0
garian

ria

1878:

SEA

ga
ul
:B

7-

BLACK

-3

7
18

Tu
9:

12

13

19

52
s
rk

0
0,0

19

ar

lg

u
:B

50

18

1806-7
:

-8

8
87

s
an

Sofia

1918-9: Turks *

00

Tu
0:

0
00

1860s: Circassian
sA
bh

15
0,
:T
at
ar
s
18
77
-8

0,

ks

az

A
SE

12

0,

10

m
Cri
:
s
0

30

s 1.2 mil.
n
ia

0
00

rs
ata
T
ean

00
0,0

IA

17

SP

1875-80: Bosn
ia
n

ars
Tat
n
a
me
Cri
:
s
70

00
0

Bucharest

Sarajevo

0
0,0
10

Tabriz

IRAN
Mosul

Aleppo

Christians
Numbers
Unknown

M E D I T E R R A N E A N

S E A

MUSLIM
GREEK
ARMENIAN
BULGARIAN
OTHER

Muslims

Ottoman
Europe

Istanbul

N. Anatolia

40
4

30
3

20
2

10
1

1
W. Anatolia

E. Anatolia

C. Anatolia

Population of Ottoman Balkans and Anatolia by Religion, 1912

Cilicia

0
%

Muslim Christian

Forced Migration
1770-1923 (millions)
unknowns not included

Muslim Christian

Muslim Christian

1877-1878 War
Europe (%)

Balkan Wars
Europe (%)

Muslim Armenian Muslim Greek

East Mainly East West Mainly West

Anatolian Wars, 1914-1922 (%)*

* By Region. Due to migration, Greek and Armenian losses

Wartime Mortality, Mainly Civilian

by individual regions of Anatolia are not precisely known,

Muslim Christian

Deaths (millions)
1864-1922
including Caucasians, 1864-7