The Socioeconomic Background of the Land Question and Dispossession of Armenians

This handbook chapter engages with literature on the confiscation and transfer of Armenian properties and capital from the mid-nineteenth century to the early twentieth century in the Ottoman Empire and Turkey. To this endeavor, this chapter highlights the different theoretical positions used to make sense of the dispossession of Armenians, bringing empirical research and theoretical positions into dialogue. First of all, it draws attention to the role of the land question of Armenians in the nineteenth century and concentrates on the dispossession process during and subsequently post World War I. Accordingly, the chapter underlines the understudied dimension of the active participation and underlying motivations of ordinary Muslims in carrying out the Armenian massacres and confiscations. Overall, this chapter draws on a range of scholarship to demonstrate that the dispossession and massacre of Armenians created a source of wealth for the Turkish state and Turkish bourgeoisie. In other words, the chapter sheds light on the complex and intertwined histories of exploitation and inequalities that have shaped Turkey’s political, economic, social, intellectual, and cultural history.