This article explores a forcible, wartime transfer of women and minors from one ethnic group to another, and its partial reversal after the war. I analyze the historical conditions that enabled the original transfer, and then the circumstances that shaped the reverse transfer. The setting is Istanbul during and immediately after World War I, and the protagonists are various influential agents connected to the Ottoman Turkish state and to the Armenian Patriarchate. The absence and subsequent involvement of European Great Powers determines the broader, shifting context. The narrative follows the bodies of women and children, who were the subjects of the protagonists' discourses and the objects of their policies. This is the first in-depth study to connect these two processes involved: the wartime integration of Armenian women and children into Muslim settings, and postwar Armenian attempts to rescue, reintegrate, and redistribute them. I explain why and how the Armenian vorpahavak (gathering of orphans and widows) worked as it did, and situate it comparatively with similar events. I highlight its uniqueness, and the theoretical possibilities that it offers toward understanding why and how women, children, and reproduction matter to collectivities in crisis.

This article focuses on the years after World War I, especially the first decade following the 1923 establishment of the Republic of Turkey, in order to analyze the position of minorities in the developing “we” of the new nation as projected by its political elite. Situating the discussion in the context of the League of Nations interwar minority protection regime, I demonstrate that the Treaty of Lausanne, which the Ankara government and the Allies signed in July 1923, played an important role in the conflicting treatment that minorities have since received in Turkey. The treaty's minority protection clauses entrenched divisions that had already been formed in the Ottoman Empire during the violence of the preceding decade, including the Armenian genocide. Moreover, reminding Turkish leaders of how 19th-century European imperial powers had used the cause of Ottoman Christians’ suffering as an excuse to infringe on Ottoman sovereignty, these clauses alarmed the Turkish political elite, especially as the “Great Powers” themselves were not bound by such minority protection guarantees. The goal of preventing a repetition of this unbalanced international power dynamic, which, according to the new Turkey's leaders, had led to the demise of the Ottoman Empire, engendered paradoxical policies toward non-Muslim Turkish citizens; they have been largely excluded from a Turkness (Türklük) to which they were sometimes included, even forcibly included.

of the processes of confiscation, appropriation and distribution on labor relations and production patterns. How did the property transfer affect the crops and goods in the production of which Armenians played vital roles? Could the new Muslim bourgeoisie whose start-up capital was the Armenian properties become successful economic actors? Did this process of property transfer contribute to class stratification? Or did it open the way for social mobility? These questions can only be answered through detailed studies on different localities. Armenian sources, including the archives of the Patriarchate and Armenian foundations, have been largely sidelined in historical studies conducted in Turkey. As explained by Bedross Der Matossian in detail, there are several Armenian sources, which can provide valuable information for research projects that can be formulated around these questions. The fact that more scholars have been learning Armenian in recent years hints that Armenian sources will be incorporated into more studies in years to come. Considering the importance of regional differences in the Ottoman Empire, regional comparisons with regards to these questions can provide valuable insights regarding economic and social history. Another issue, which remains understudied in the literature on the confiscation, appropriation and distribution of Armenian properties, is the links between material motives and choices of the ordinary people. How did the Muslim immigrants settled on Armenian properties react to the prospects of their return? Beyond theoretical reasoning, did the distribution of Armenian properties serve as a means to re-establish state-society relations in different localities? If so, is it possible to trace this in the acts of those who benefited from this process in the Republican period? Academic research seeking to answer these questions can enrich our understanding of the history of the Armenian Genocide, the late Ottoman Empire and Republican Turkey.

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