Commemorating Genocide: The Role of Property Seizure in the Armenian Genocide and Its Aftermath

Economic discrimination and plunder contributed directly to the CUP’s process of destruction in a variety of ways. At the direct level of implementation, the prospect of booty helped to motivate local collaborators in the massacres and the deportations orchestrated by the CUP security forces. Similar to the policy of Nazi leaders with regards to the “Aryanization” of Jewish property during the Holocaust, the CUP aimed to have complete control over the confiscation and expropriation of Armenian properties for the economic interests of the state, but could not prevent corruption. As such, the widespread participation of the local population as beneficiaries served to spread complicity and legitimacy to the CUP’s actions.

It should be emphasized that corruption was fairly rife among bureaucrats and officers of the Abandoned Properties Commissions and Liquidation Commissions, who were the responsible actors for administering and confiscating properties under the supervision and for the advantage of the state – as was the case during the “Aryanization” of Jewish property. A number of leading members of the Central Committee of the Union and Progress Party, as well as CUP-oriented governors and mutasarrıfs, seized a great deal of property, especially those belonging to affluent Armenians in many vilayets [provinces]. According to one argument, CUP leaders also utilized Armenian property and wealth to meet the deportation expenses.

After the establishment of the Turkish Republic in 1926, the Turkish Grand National Assembly passed a law. This law was promulgated and enforced on 27 June 1926. According to this law, Turkish government officers, politicians, and bureaucrats who were executed as a result of their roles in the Armenian deportations or who were murdered by Dashnaks, were declared “national heroes,” and the so-called “abandoned properties” of Armenians were given to their families. And in 1928, the Turkish Republic introduced a new regulation that granted muhacirs or Muslim refugees who were using Armenian properties the right to have the title deeds of those properties, which included houses, land, agricultural land and shops.

As such, a variety of actors and institutions seized the opportunity. Economic motivation was always present and enabled CUP central actors to carry out their ultra-nationalist ideological policies against Armenians. The process of genocide and deportation directed at the Armenians was, in fact, put into practice by local notables and provincial elites. These local actors prospered through their new acquisitions, transforming them into the new wealthy social stratum. In this respect, the Union and Progress Party’s genocide and deportation decree on May 27, 1915 had a social basis through the practice of effective power, control, and support mechanism(s) at the local level.

The distribution of a great amount of the “abandoned property” provided a useful incentive that reinforced hatred for local Armenians. And as Lemkin noted, the participation of local people is a necessary condition to ensure the effectiveness of genocidal policies. Planned extermination of all members of a given category of people is impossible without the involvement of their neighbors – those who know who’s who in a community. Therefore, the entire process of confiscation can be evaluated and construed as both an ideological principle and economic motivation. These two aspects cannot be separated from each other. In some instances, ideology played a more significant role than economic motivation, and in other instances economic interests came into prominence.

The essence of all the laws and regulations issued was the erasure of all traces of the Armenians from Anatolian soil. Perhaps the physical annihilation of the Armenians was necessary to achieve this goal, but it was not sufficient in and of itself. The use of the legal system was as important as, if not even more important than their physical annihilation.

The law, in particular the Law of Abandoned Properties, became the most important tool of the Ottoman Empire. Economic interests blinded people from the plight of their fellows who were made to disappear.