Armenian... | 1914 | 2011 |
---|---|---|
population | 1,914,620[1] | 60,000[2] |
churches and monasteries | 2,538[1] | 34 (functioning only)[3] |
schools | 1,996[1] | 18[3] |
The eastern part of the current territory of the Republic of Turkey is part of the ancestral homeland of the Armenians.[4] Along with the Armenian population, during and after the Armenian genocide the Armenian cultural heritage was targeted for destruction by the Turkish government. Of the several thousand churches and monasteries (usually estimated from two to three thousand) in the Ottoman Empire in 1914, today only a few hundred are still standing in some form; most of these are in danger of collapse. Those that continue to function are mainly in Istanbul.
Most of the properties formerly belonging to Armenians were confiscated by the Turkish government and turned into military posts, hospitals, schools and prisons. Many of these were also given to Muslim migrants or refugees who had fled from their homelands during the Balkan Wars. The legal justification for the seizures was the law of Emval-i Metruke (Law of Abandoned Properties), which legalized the confiscation of Armenian property if the owner did not return.[5]
Currently, only one-sixth of that land [ancestral territory] is inhabited by Armenians, due first to variously coerced emigrations and finally to the genocide of the Armenian inhabitants of the Ottoman Turkish Empire in 1915.
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