In September 1920, remnants of the Ottoman Army's XV Corps under the command of Kâzım Karabekir attacked the First Republic of Armenia, specifically in the Kars. Karabekir had orders from the Ankara Government to "eliminate Armenia physically and politically".[16][17][18][19] One estimate places the number of Armenians massacred by the Turkish army during the invasion at 100,000[19]—this is evident in the marked decline (−25.1%) of the population of modern-day Armenia from 961,677 in 1919[20] to 720,000 in 1920.[21] The Turkish military victory was followed by the Red Army invasion of Armenia and the establishment of the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic. The Turkish invasion and occupation had drastic humanitarian impacts to Armenia's population,[22] triggering condemnation from German and USA officials.[23][24][25] According to several historians, only Soviet intervention prevented the completion of the Armenian genocide.[18][26][27]
The dissolution of the Russian Empire in the wake of the February Revolution saw the Armenians of the South Caucasus declaring their independence and formally establishing the First Republic of Armenia.[28] In its two years of existence, the republic, with its capital in Yerevan, was beset with a number of debilitating problems, including fierce territorial disputes with its neighbors and a severe refugee crisis.[29]
Armenia's most crippling problem was its dispute with its neighbor to the west, the Ottoman Empire. Approximately 1.5 million Armenians had perished during the Armenian genocide. Although the armies of the Ottoman Empire eventually occupied the South Caucasus in the summer of 1918 and stood poised to crush the republic, Armenia resisted until the end of October, when the Ottoman Empire capitulated to the Allied powers. Though the Ottoman Empire was partially occupied by the Allies, and while being invaded by Franco-Armenian forces during the Cilicia Campaign, the Turks did not withdraw their forces to the pre-war Russo-Turkish boundary until February 1919 and maintained many troops mobilized along this frontier.[30]:416
Bolshevik and Turkish nationalist movements
During the First World War and in the ensuing peace negotiations in Paris, the Allies had vowed to punish the Turks and reward some, if not all, of the eastern provinces of the empire to the nascent Armenian republic.[31] But the Allies were more concerned with concluding the peace treaties with Germany and the other European members of the Central Powers. In matters related to the Near East, the principal powers, Great Britain, France, Italy and the United States, had conflicting interests over the spheres of influence they were to assume. While there were crippling internal disputes between the Allies, and the United States was reluctant to accept a mandate over Armenia, disaffected elements in the Ottoman Empire in 1920 began to disavow the decisions made by the Ottoman government in Constantinople, coalesced and formed the Turkish National Movement, under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal Pasha.[32] The Turkish Nationalists considered any partition of formerly Ottoman lands (and subsequent distribution to non-Turkish authorities) to be unacceptable. Their avowed goal was to "guarantee the safety and unity of the country".[33] The Bolsheviks sympathized with the Turkish Movement due to their mutual opposition to "Western Imperialism", as the Bolsheviks referred to it.[34]
In his message to Vladimir Lenin, the leader of the Bolsheviks, dated 26 April 1920, Kemal promised to coordinate his military operations with the Bolsheviks' "fight against imperialist governments" and requested five million lira in gold as well as armaments "as first aid" to his forces.[35][full citation needed] In 1920, the Lenin government supplied the Kemalists with 6,000 rifles, more than five million rifle cartridges, and 17,600 projectiles, as well as 200.6kg of gold bullion; in the following two years the amount of aid increased.[36] In the negotiations of the Treaty of Moscow (1921), the Bolsheviks demanded that the Turks cede Batum and Nakhichevan; they also asked for more rights in the future status of the Straits.[37] Despite the concessions made by the Turks, the financial and military supplies were slow in coming.[37] Only after the decisive Battle of Sakarya (August–September 1921), the aid started to flow in faster.[37] After much delays, the Armenians received from the Allies in July 1920 about 40,000 uniforms and 25,000 rifles with a great amount of ammunition.[38]
It was not until August 1920 that the Allies drafted the peace settlement of the Near East in the form of the Treaty of Sèvres. Under the terms of the treaty, portions of four northeastern vilayets of the Ottoman Empire were allotted to the First Republic of Armenia and subsequently came to be known as Wilsonian Armenia, after the US President Woodrow Wilson.[39] The Treaty of Sèvres served to confirm Kemal's suspicions about Allied plans to partition the empire. According to historian Richard G. Hovannisian, Kemal's decision to order attacks on Armenian troops in Oltu District in the erstwhile Kars Oblast that eventually expanded into an invasion of Armenia proper was intended to show the Allies that "the treaty would not be accepted and that there would be no peace until the West was ready to offer new terms in keeping with the principles of the Turkish National Pact."[40]
According to Turkish and Soviet sources, Turkish plans to take back formerly Ottoman-controlled lands in the east were already in place as early as June 1920.[41] Using Turkish sources, historian Bilâl Şamşir has identified mid-June as to when exactly the Ankara government began to prepare for a campaign in the east.[42] Hostilities were first begun by Kemalist forces.[43]Kâzım Karabekir was assigned command of the newly formed Eastern Front on 9 June 1920[44] and was given authority over a field army and all civil and military officials in the Eastern Front on 13 or 14 June.[45] Skirmishes between Turkish and Armenian forces in the area surrounding Kars were frequent during that summer, although full-scale hostilities did not break out until September. Convinced that the Allies would not come to the defense of Armenia and aware that the leaders of the Republic of Armenia had failed to gain recognition of its independence by Soviet Russia, Kemal gave the order to commanding general Kâzım Karabekir to advance into Armenian-held territory.[46] At 2:30 in the morning of 13 September, five battalions from the Turkish XV Army Corps attacked Armenian positions, surprising the thinly spread and unprepared Armenian forces at Oltu and Penek. By dawn, Karabekir's forces had occupied Penek and the Armenians had suffered at least 200 casualties and been forced to retreat east towards Sarıkamış.[47] As neither the Allied powers nor Soviet Russia reacted to Turkish operations, on September 20 Kemal authorized Karabekir to push onwards and take Kars and Kağızman.
Araratian regiment going to the Turkish–Armenian front, 1920
By this time, Karabekir's XV Corps had grown to the size of four divisions. At 3:00 in the morning of 28 September, the four divisions of the XV Army Corps advanced towards Sarıkamış, creating such panic that Armenian residents had abandoned the town by the time the Turks entered the next day.[48] The armed forces started toward Kars but were delayed by Armenian resistance. In early October, the Armenian government pleaded that the Allies intervene and put a halt to the Turkish advance, but to no avail. Most of Britain's available forces in the Near East were concentrated on crushing the Kurdish tribal uprisings in Iraq with the help of the Assyrians, while France and Italy were also fighting the Turkish revolutionaries near Syria and Italian controlled Antalya.[49] Neighboring Georgia declared neutrality during the conflict.
On 11 October, Soviet plenipotentiary Boris Legran arrived in Yerevan with a text to negotiate a new Soviet-Armenian agreement.[50] The agreement signed on 24 October secured Soviet support.[50] The most important part of this agreement dealt with Kars, which Armenia agreed to secure.[50] The Turkish national movement was not happy with possible agreement between the Soviets and Armenia. Karabekir was informed by the Government of the Grand National Assembly regarding the Boris Legran agreement and ordered to resolve the Kars issue. The same day the agreement between Armenia and Soviet Russia was signed, Karabekir moved his forces toward Kars.
Armenian civilians flee Kars after its capture by Turkish forces
On 24 October, Karabekir's forces launched a new, massive campaign against Kars.[49] The Armenians abandoned the city, which by 30 October came under full Turkish occupation.[51] Turkish forces continued to advance, and, a week after the capture of Kars, took control of Alexandropol (present-day Gyumri, Armenia).[1] On 12 November, the Turks also captured the strategic village of Aghin, northeast of the ruins of the former Armenian capital of Ani, and planned to move toward Yerevan. On 13 November, Georgia broke its neutrality. It had concluded an agreement with Armenia to invade the disputed region of Lori, which was established as a Neutral Zone (the Shulavera Condominium) between the two nations in early 1919.[52]
The Turks, occupying Alexandropol (today called Gyumri), presented the Armenians with an ultimatum which they were forced to accept. They followed it with a more radical demand which threatened the existence of Armenia as a viable entity. The Armenians at first rejected this demand, but when Karabekir's forces continued to advance, they had little choice but to capitulate.[49] On November 18, 1920, Armenian and Turkish forces concluded a cease-fire agreement.[1] During the invasion the Turkish Army carried out mass atrocities against Armenian civilians in Kars and Alexandropol. These included rapes and massacres where tens of thousands of civilians were executed.[13][14][15]
The Armenian delegation led by Khatisyan then signed the Treaty of Alexandropol with Kemalist Turkey on 3 December 1920.[1] The treaty required Armenia to disarm most of its military forces, renounce the Treaty of Sèvres, and cede the entire territory of the former Kars Oblast and the district of Surmalu to Turkey, as well as make territorial concessions to Azerbaijan in Nakhichevan.[53] The decision to sign the illegal treaty was justified by Khatisyan as necessary to prevent Karabekir's army from advancing further and reaching Echmiadzin and Yerevan ahead of the Red Army.[54]
As the terms of defeat were being negotiated between Karabekir and Armenian Foreign Minister Alexander Khatisyan, Joseph Stalin, on the command of Vladimir Lenin, ordered Grigoriy Ordzhonikidze to enter Armenia from Azerbaijan in order to establish a new pro-Bolshevik government in the country. On the night of 28–29 November, the Soviet Eleventh Army under the command of Anatoli Gekker invaded Armenia at Karavansarai (present-day Ijevan), meeting little to no resistance.[49] That same day, the Armenian Revolutionary Committee (a committee of Armenian Bolsheviks formed in Baku a week earlier to facilitate Armenia's sovietization) declared Armenia a Soviet republic.[55] A majority of the Armenian leadership agreed that it was impossible to resist both the Russians and the Turks and that the Armenian army and population were exhausted. Drastamat Kanayan and Hambardzum Terterian were authorized to enter negotiations with Boris Legran to accept Soviet rule in Armenia.[56]
On 2 December 1920, the Armenian government signed an agreement with Legran declaring its resignation and the transfer of power in Armenia to a Soviet government. Drastamat Kanayan would temporarily lead the country pending the arrival of the Armenian Revolutionary Committee in Yerevan.[56] On behalf of Soviet Russia, Legran guaranteed the restoration of Armenia's pre-war borders.[54]
Impact
The Turkish invasion and occupation had drastic humanitarian impacts:[22] 200 villages were plundered of agricultural equipment and humanitarian supplies,[57] with 12,000 people taken away as slaves,[58] and crops seized or allowed to rot in the fields,[59][60][61] leading to a catastrophic famine-ridden winter between 1918-1919 where 500,000 Armenians were left destitute,[62] and 180,000 thousand Armenians died from starvation,[25][63] corresponding to one-fifth of the population of the new Armenian republic.[64] Shocked by the scale of the killings and starvation, American officials urged President Wilson to withdraw Article 12 of the Peace Declaration unless Turkey stopped the massacres in the Caucasus.[23][24] A German government report stated "the Armenians were subjected to indescribable tortures; children were put in sacks and thrown into the sea. The old men and women were crucified and mutilated, all the young girls and women were handed over to the Turks."[25]
Around 60,000 Armenians were killed by Turkish forces and 38,000 wounded, with 16,000 of 18,000 prisoners perishing through execution, starvation, or exposure, and only 2,000 surviving.[65] In 1919, over 130,000 Armenians and Yazidis lived in the Surmalu and Kars regions (present-day Turkish provinces of Iğdır, Kars, and Ardahan), but after the 1920 Turkish occupation, massacres, and expulsions, fewer than half—about 59,800—reached the new Armenian republic as refugees.[20]
A commission investigating atrocities committed by the Turkish invaders in Shirak reported that 11,886 corpses were buried, of whom 90 percent were women and children and 10 percent were men. In Agbulag, 1,186 were killed; in Ghaltakhchi, 2,100; in Karaboya, 1,100; and in three villages where refugees from Kars had gathered, 7,500 people were massacred.[66]
The academic Pamela Steiner wrote, "it seems that the Ottomans could not even tolerate the presence of the Armenian people living in any part of their Transcaucasian homeland."[67] Historian Robin Cohen states during this period, "the Armenians hung on for 'grim death' " but by the end of 1920, they were only left with Soviet Armenia which comprised 10% of the Armenian homeland.[68]
Sovietization and partition of the First Republic of Armenia
Destroyed Yerevan after Turkish-Armenian war, 1920The Soviet-Turkish frontier established in the Treaty of Kars.
The Red Army entered Yerevan on 4 December 1920, joined by the Armenian Revolutionary Committee the next day. State authority in Armenia formally passed over to the committee. Finally, on 6 December, the Cheka, Soviet Russia's secret police, entered Yerevan. Though nominally an independent Soviet republic, Armenia had effectively ceased to exist as an independent state.[49] Reneging on their agreement not to subject members of the former ruling party, the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, to repressions, the new Soviet Armenian authorities arrested numerous members of the ARF and conducted expropriations in the countryside, triggering an anti-Bolshevik uprising in February 1921, during which Soviet power was briefly overthrown in Armenia. The Red Army intervened to restore Soviet authority, although anti-Bolshevik resistance continued in the southern region of Zangezur until July 1921.
The warfare in Transcaucasia was settled in a friendship treaty between the Grand National Assembly of Turkey (GNAT) (which proclaimed the Turkish Republic in 1923), and Soviet Russia (RSFSR). The "Treaty on Friendship and Brotherhood", called the Treaty of Moscow, was signed on 16 March 1921. The succeeding Treaty of Kars, signed by the representatives of Azerbaijan SSR, Armenian SSR, Georgian SSR, and the GNAT, ceded Adjara to Soviet Georgia in exchange for the Kars territory (today the Turkish provinces of Kars, Iğdır, and Ardahan). Under the treaties, an autonomous Nakhichevan oblast was established under Azerbaijan's protectorate. The Treaty of Kars effectively confirmed Armenia's territorial losses to Turkey as stipulated by the invalid Treaty of Alexandropol and established the Armenia–Turkey border that exists to this day.
↑ Kadishev, A. B. (1960), Интервенция и гражданская война в Закавказье[Intervention and civil war in the South Caucasus] (in Russian), Moscow, p.324{{citation}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
↑ Ter Minassian, Anahide (1989). La république d'Arménie. 1918–1920 La mémoire du siècle (in French). Brussels: Éditions complexe. p.220. ISBN2-87027-280-4.
1 2 3 These are according to the figures provided by Alexander Miasnikyan, the President of the Council of People's Commissars of Soviet Armenia, in a telegram he sent to the Soviet Foreign Minister Georgy Chicherin in 1921. Miasnikyan's figures were broken down as follows: of the approximately 60,000 Armenians who were killed by the Turkish armies, 30,000 were men, 15,000 women, 5,000 children, and 10,000 young girls. Of the 38,000 who were wounded, 20,000 were men, 10,000 women, 5,000 young girls, and 3,000 children. Instances of mass rape, murder and violence were also reported against the Armenian populace of Kars and Alexandropol: see Dadrian, Vahakn N. (2003). The History of the Armenian Genocide: Ethnic Conflict from the Balkans to Anatolia to the Caucasus. New York: Berghahn Books. pp.360–361. ISBN1-57181-666-6.
1 2 3 Kévorkian, Raymond (2020). "The Final Phase: The Cleansing of Armenian and Greek Survivors, 1919–1922". Collective and State Violence in Turkey: The Construction of a National Identity from Empire to Nation-State. Berghahn Books. pp.164–165. ISBN978-1-78920-451-3.
↑ The Armenians: Past and Present in the Making of National Identity. Edmund Herzig, Marina Kurkchiyan. London: RoutledgeCurzon. 2005. pp.115–117. ISBN0-203-00493-0. OCLC229988654.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
1 2 Herzig, Edmund; Kurkchiyan, Marina, eds. (2014). The Armenians: past and present in the making of national identity. Caucasus world: peoples of the Caucasus (First issued in paperbacked.). London New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. p.100. ISBN978-1-138-87458-9. Industrial income had never been high in Russian Armenia, but in 1918–19 it totalled only 8 per cent of the 1914 pre-war level. The overall agricultural decline exceeded 80 per cent, and this was paralleled by the losses of livestock and farm implements. Thousands of animals had been slaughtered for food by the Turkish armies of occupation and thousands more were driven towards Kars when those armies had to withdraw after the war. Most of the remaining animals were devoured by the refugees or else succumbed to disease. The plight of the population was pitiful.
1 2 Balakian, Peter (2004). The burning Tigris: the Armenian genocide and America's response (1. Perennialed.). New York: Perennial. pp.329–330. ISBN978-0-06-055870-3.
↑ For the period leading up to independence see Richard G. Hovannisian (1967). Armenia on the Road to Independence, 1918. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN0-520-00574-0.
↑ The full history of the Armenian republic is covered by Richard G. Hovannisian, Republic of Armenia. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971–1996.
↑ Ter Minassian, Anahide (1989). La république d'Arménie. 1918–1920 La mémoire du siècle (in French). Brussels: Éditions complexe. p.196. ISBN2-87027-280-4.
↑ Hovannisian, Richard G. (1996). The Republic of Armenia. Vol.IV: Between Crescent and Sickle: Partition and Sovietization. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press. pp.40–44. ISBN0-520-08804-2.
↑ Hovannisian. Republic of Armenia, Vol. IV, p. 180.
↑ Hovannisian. Republic of Armenia, Vol. IV, p. 194, note 27.
↑ (in Turkish) Şimşir, Bilâl N. Ermeni Meselesi, 1774–2005 [The Armenian Question, 1774–2005]. Bilgi Yayınevi, 2005, p. 182.
↑ (in Turkish) T. C. Genelkurmay Harp Tarihi Başkanlığı Yayınları, Türk İstiklâl Harbine Katılan Tümen ve Daha Üst Kademelerdeki Komutanların Biyografileri, Genkurmay Başkanlığı Basımevi, Ankara, 1972.
↑ "Kâzım Karabekir Paşa, Doğu Cephesi'nde bulunan bütün sivil ve askeri makamlar üzerinde seferdeki ordu komutanlığı yetkisine haizdir": (in Turkish) Kemal Atatürk, Atatürk'ün bütün Eserleri: 23 Nisan – 7/8 Temmuz 1920 [The Complete Works of Atatürk: 23 April – 7/8 July]. Kaynak Yayınları, 2002, p. 314. ISBN978-975-343-349-5.
↑ Hovannisian. Republic of Armenia, Vol. IV, pp. 182–184.
↑ Hovannisian. Republic of Armenia, Vol. IV, pp. 184–190.
↑ Hovannisian. Republic of Armenia, Vol. IV, pp. 191–197.
1 2 3 Hovannisian. Republic of Armenia, Vol. IV, p. 259.
↑ Hovannisian. Republic of Armenia, Vol. IV, pp. 253–261.
↑ Hovannisian. Republic of Armenia, Vol. IV, pp. 222–226.
↑ Hovannisian, Richard G. (2017). "The Contest for Kars, 1914–1921". Armenian Kars and Ani. Costa Mesa: Mazda Publishers. p.316.
1 2 Hovannisian. Republic of Armenia, Vol. IV, p. 391.
↑ Hovannisian. Republic of Armenia, Vol. IV, p. 377.
1 2 Hovannisian. Republic of Armenia, Vol. IV, pp. 384–388.
↑ "Caucasian Armenia Between Imperial and Soviet Rule: The Interlude of National Independence (1980) | Wilson Center". www.wilsoncenter.org. 11 April 2013. p.114. Retrieved 20 August 2025. The Turkish invasion and occupation in 1918 compounded these losses, with more than 200 villages plundered, half the vineyards in the Araxes valley ruined, and about 200,000 large horned animals driven away, together with thousands of carts and agricultural implements. Hence, 80 percent of the households of Armenia were left without a single horse, and nearly half had neither cow nor ox. During the spring sowing season in 1919, only a fourth of the farmland was planted, and agricultural income dipped to a sixth of the prewar level.
↑ Bloxham, Donald (13 September 2006). "The Great Game of Genocide: Imperialism, Nationalism and the Destruction of the Ottoman Armenians. Reviewed by Kerem Oktem". Nations and Nationalism. 12 (4): 712–714. doi:10.1111/j.1469-8129.2006.00266_7.x. ISSN1354-5078. Armenians were killed shortly after Turkish entry at the end of October 1920. Similar stories of mass murder, rape, and ubiquitous pillage emerged on the conquest of Alexandropol.23 Alexandropol, indeed, was occupied by Turkish forces for some five months while the Turkish–Russian border was being demarcated, and in that time, according to Soviet sources, some 60,000 Armenians were killed, of whom only half were adult males, and 18,000 carried away for forced labour.
↑ Steiner, Pamela (2021). Collective Trauma and the Armenian Genocide. Hart Publishing. pp.213–214. doi:10.5040/9781509934867. ISBN978-1-5099-3483-6. Social historian Nora Nercessian cites a 1918 report revealing that the Ottomans went far beyond the demands they had extracted from the Armenians in the Batum treaty. In Aleksandropol (today's Gyumri), a town just to the northwest of Yerevan, Turkish forces confiscated and transported to Turkey more than 50,000 large antlered animals, 100,000 heads of sheep, 5,000 horses, 90,282,500 pounds of wheat, tools, spades, and 80% of the carts in the province to prevent the future cultivation of lands to replace the wheat and barley the province had been stripped of. Stores were robbed, large quantities of furniture from homes were taken, and rugs and carpets along with large panes of glass, doors, window jams, and roofing had been stripped off houses. Additionally, 12,000 individuals had been taken as slaves.
↑ "Caucasian Armenia Between Imperial and Soviet Rule: The Interlude of National Independence (1980) | Wilson Center". www.wilsoncenter.org. 11 April 2013. p.5. Retrieved 20 August 2025. The Turkish armies of occupation finally withdrew from Erevan province, picking clean the fields and villages, down to sickles, doors, and railway ties, and ushering in a winter of death for the thousands of Russian Armenian peasants who hurried back into the Araxes valley to reclaim their lands.
↑ Balakian, Peter (2004). The burning Tigris: the Armenian genocide and America's response (1. Perennialed.). New York: Perennial. p.322. ISBN978-0-06-055870-3. An American officer named Arrol, who was stationed near Alexandropol with a small U.S. relief effort, noted in late December 1918 that as they were leaving the Armenian areas, the Turkish soldiers stole large quantities of humanitarian supplies, sabotaging the efforts to save Armenians who were dying of starvation. Arrol reported the theft of some 112,000 tons of wheat, 3,000 tons of cot ton, and household goods from the trains and stockpiles. What they couldn't carry they left along the way to rot. Arrol also noted that numerous children had been raped and beaten, and the corpses of dozens of Armenian women littered the road.
↑ Lang, David Marshall (19 October 2021). The Armenians: A People in Exile (1ed.). London: Routledge. p.36. doi:10.4324/9781003250791. ISBN978-1-003-25079-1. It is impossible to count the number of those who died in the terrible famine which affected Armenia from 1918 to 1920. The British High Commissioner in Transcaucasia saw dozens of emaciated victims collapsing and dying on the streets of Erevan. It is estimated that there were half a million homeless refugees from Turkish Armenia in and around Erevan in 1918. It is doubtful if more than half of them survived the famine, epidemics, and freezing cold.
↑ The History of the Armenian Genocide: Ethnic Conflict from the Balkans to Anatolia to the Caucasus. New York: Berghahn Books, pp. 360–361. ISBN1-57181-666-6.
↑ Cohen, Robin (2022). Global diasporas: an introduction (25th anniversaryed.). Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group. p.51. ISBN978-1-003-25652-6.
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