The Plunder of Wealth through Abandoned Properties Laws in the Armenian Genocide

Abstract

The state-orchestrated plunder of Armenian property immediately impoverished its victims; this was simultaneously a condition for and a consequence of the Armenian Genocide. A series of laws and decrees as well as complex bureaucratic mechanisms were devised in the Ottoman-Turkish Republican periods concerning the administration of the belongings left behind by the deported Armenians. The aim of this article is to analyze these laws and statutes, which were known as the Abandoned Properties Laws. It attempts to elucidate the dominant logic of the laws, decrees, and regulations concerning the abandoned properties, which are closely connected to the political economy of the Armenian Genocide.