Adana massacre

The Adana massacre (Armenian: Ադանայի կոտորած; Turkish: Adana Katliamı) occurred in the Adana vilayet of the Ottoman Empire in April 1909. Many Armenians were slain by Ottoman Muslims in the city of Adana as the Ottoman countercoup of 1909 triggered a series of pogroms throughout the province. Between 20,000 and 30,000 ethnic Armenians and 1,300 Assyrians were killed and tortured in Adana and the surrounding towns. Unlike the previous Hamidian massacres, the events were not officially organized by the central government, but culturally instigated via local officials, Islamic clerics, and supporters of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP).

After revolutionary groups had secured the deposition of Sultan Abdul Hamid II and the restoration of the Second Constitutional Era (Ottoman Empire) in 1908, a military revolt directed against the Committee of Union and Progress seized Constantinople. While the revolt lasted only ten days, it reignited anti-Armenian sentiment in the region and precipitated the mass destruction of Armenian businesses and farms, public hangings, sexual violence, and executions rooted in political, economic, and religious prejudice. These massacres continued for more than one month.

In July 1909, the Young Turk government announced the trials of various government and military officials, for being implicated in the massacres; however, the modern Turkish government and certain Turkish nationalists, deny the massacre happened.

Background

After the Hamidian massacres, the Great Powers (Britain, France, Russia) forced Abdul Hamid II to sign a new reform package designed to curtail the powers of the Hamidiye in October 1895 which, like the Berlin treaty, was never implemented. On 1 October 1895, two thousand Armenians assembled in Constantinople (Istanbul) to petition for the implementation of the reforms, but Ottoman police units converged on the rally and violently broke it up.