A SYNTHETIC REPLY TO THE ARGUMENT “IF IT WAS NOT GENOCIDE, WHY ARE THERE SO FEW ARMENIANS IN TURKEY TODAY?”

The historiography of the Ottoman Empire’s collapse has long been confronted with contentious debates surrounding the Armenian issue, particularly the demographic objection regarding why so few Armenians remain in Turkey today. This paper intends to provide a snapshot introduction to this issue, focusing on the multi-faceted reasons behind the drastic reduction of the Anatolian and Thracian Armenian populations and the historical context of the early 20th century.

In addition, a synthetic investigation into historical and diplomatic archives demonstrates that the forced relocations of 1915–1916 and unauthorized wartime massacres were far from the sole drivers of this demographic collapse. The study highlights four main subsequent factors: the high mortality rates from epidemics and starvation during Russian-Dashnak forced migrations to the Caucasus (1915–1918), the coercive "all or nothing" emigration policies imposed by Armenian nationalists in Çukurova (1918–1922), the systematic scorched-earth retreats and forced evacuations conducted by Greek forces in Western Anatolia and Eastern Thrace (1921–1922), and the explicit refusal of Armenian nationalist delegations to accept the Turkish repatriation offers presented during the Lausanne Conference. The paper concludes by evaluating recent shifts in Armenian political discourse, which offer new hope for the complete opening of national archives to objective, comprehensive scientific research