Confiscation of Armenian properties in Turkey

Some of the land on which the US Incirlik Air Base (right) is located was owned by Armenians and confiscated by the Ottoman government during the Armenian genocide.^[1][2] The Çankaya Köşkü Presidential Palace in 1935 (left), the official and current residence of the Vice President of Turkey, originally belonged to an Armenian named Ohannes Kasabian, who escaped the Armenian genocide.^[3][4] The property was occupied by the Bulgurluzâde family and later purchased by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder and the first president of the Republic of Turkey.^[4][5][6]

The confiscation of Armenian properties by the Ottoman and Turkish governments involved seizure of the assets, properties and land of the country's Armenian community. Starting with the Hamidian massacres and peaking during the Armenian genocide, the confiscation of the Armenian property lasted continuously until 1974.^[7] Much of the confiscations during the Armenian genocide were made after the Armenians were deported into the Syrian Desert with the government declaring their goods and assets left behind as "abandoned". Virtually all properties owned by Armenians living in their ancestral homeland in Western Armenia were confiscated and later distributed among the local Muslim population.

Historians argue that the mass confiscation of Armenian properties was an important factor in forming the economic basis of the Turkish Republic while endowing the Turkish economy with capital. The appropriation led to the formation of a new Turkish bourgeoisie and middle class.