Click on the names of highlighted cities, towns, and other locations to view a map of the genocide.

July 1

Lord Bryce submits to Lord Grey, British Secretary of Foreign Affairs, his book on The Treatment of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire.

July 5

The massacre of the 7,000 Armenian troops imprisoned in Sivas begins. The massacre lasts for twenty-one days with an average of 1,000 killed every three days.

July 6

The Russian Army occupies Bayburt and Erzinjan.

July 10

The U.S. Congress proposes a day of commemoration for the collection of funds for the Armenians.

July 19

The U.S. House of Representatives adopts the resolution introduced in the U.S. Senate establishing a day of commemoration for the Armenian victims.

July 23

In order to further the Islamization and Turkification of the Armenian remnants in the Hawran District, all the Armenian clerics found there are murdered by the Turks.

July 23

The proposal is made to the Armenian military doctors in Sivas that they become Muslims. Almost all refuse and are at once killed.

July to March 1917

The Turkish Army on the Caucasian Front loses 60,000 men to starvation, disease and other causes, leaving effectively only 20,000. Marshal Liman von Sanders attributes these losses to the destruction of Turkish agricultural production because of the deportations of the Armenians.

August 1

The Interior Ministry abolishes the Armenian Patriarchate and the legal rights of the Armenian community (the Millet Ermeni) on the grounds that there is no Armenian community left in Turkey.

August 7

Newly appointed U.S. Ambassador to Turkey, Abram E. Elkus, leaves for Constantinople.

August 8

Fifteen thousand Armenian deportees are removed from Aleppo to the desert.

August 12

The Turkish government again refuses aid to the Armenian deportees by a neutral commission.

August 13

Salih Zeki, the governor of Der-el-Zor (Deir el-Zor), informs Talaat that he is changing the location of the deportees.

August 14

Two hundred thousand Armenian deportees are reported killed in massacres by this date in the Zor District, at a delta formed by the juncture of the Khabur and Euphrates River near Suwar (Suvar), Marrat (Marat), and Elbusayra.

September 3

A five-member commission of Turks arrives in the Hawran District to convert the Armenian deportees to Islam.

September 5

The government orders all Armenian orphans to be given Turkish names.

September 7

Sixty thousand more Armenian deportees are reported massacred in the Der-el-Zor (Deir el-Zor) area.

September 16

Turkish authorities enter American consular offices to search for British records.

September 29

The German Cabinet, in its 86th session, discusses the Armenian massacres.

October 3

Count Wolff-Metternich leaves his post as ambassador to Turkey, recalled by the German General Staff at the request of Enver because he had protested against the Armenian massacres. Wilhelm Radowitz is interim Chargè d'affaires for Germany until November 16 and the arrival of the new ambassador, Richard von Kuhlmann.

October 4

Wilhelm Radowitz reports to the German Chancellor Theobald von Bethman Hollweg that of the two million Armenians in Turkey, one and half million had been deported. Of these 1,175,000 were dead; 325,000 were still living.

October 5

The Turkish government confiscates by a provisional law all the real estate of the Armenians.

October 8 and October 9

U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, acting on the resolution of Congress, proclaims these two days "Armenian Relief Days."

October 11

A highly secret Ittihad convention is convened in Constantinople to review existing policy toward the Armenians and to decide on a future course of action.

November 16

Richard von Kuhlmann is appointed as the new German ambassador in Constantinople. He serves until July 1917, when he is promoted to the office of Foreign Minister.

December 4

Omer Naji, an inspector-general of the Ittihad Committee, is reported to have announced that Ittihad is seeking to organize a purely Turkish state.

Next Segment — 1917 Segments of the Chronology