The aftermath of the deportation: the Armenian population after the great war and the Jamanak daily

Abstract

The aim of this thesis is to explore what the Ottoman Armenians had experienced after the forced deportation which was ordered by the Ottoman government. In recent historiography, the vast majority of the academic studies shed light mainly on the Armenian deportation, focusing on the facts that make the events whether a genocide or a simple relocation. This thesis is motivated by a curiosity to fulfill the absence in the recent historiography of what native Armenians had suffered just after the deportation and what they had witnessed in Anatolia. It is largely based on the articles published in the Jamanak daily which had an uninterrupted print run during and after the wartime. After examining the Armenian existence in Anatolia before the war and the wartime events that drastically reshaped the Armenian community in the first chapter, the thesis focuses on the effects of Armistice of Mudros in the Armenian and Ottoman communities in the second chapter and then analyzes the general mood of the Armenian community after the Great War in the third chapter by reflecting the articles and reports published in the Jamanak daily mainly in 1918-1919, thus just after the ceasefire agreement. The consequence of the research carried out within this thesis show that the Armenian community continued suffering pain after the deportation because of the lack of sufficient assistance and of the political chaos and uncertainness. With this aspect, this thesis has been a modest contribution to the already established historiography.