Deportation of Armenian intellectuals on 24 April 1915

24 April 1915: the circular, then the night

Interior Minister Talaat issued a circular on 24 April 1915 directing authorities to close Armenian political organizations, seize their records and arrest the associated leaders. His ministry asserted that those organizations were aiding the empire's enemies during the war.

During the night of 24–25 April, Ottoman security and police agents arrested several hundred Armenian political activists, journalists, writers, lawyers, doctors, educators, clergy and merchants in Constantinople. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum gives a rounded figure of 240 Armenian leaders arrested.

Not everyone on the lists was a leader

The roundup swept up clergy, physicians, educators and merchants, and people detained because they shared a name with an intended target. The poet and educator Daniel Varoujan and the clergyman-composer Komitas Vardapet were among them.

Two Armenian parliamentary deputies who were initially left free went to Talaat's home on 25 April to demand an explanation.

Haydarpaşa station, then Ayaş and Çankırı

Detainees were processed at State Security headquarters, held for at least a day in the central prison, escorted to Haydarpaşa station and transported by rail toward Ankara. Arrest and deportation were separate stages, not one same-day act.

Near Ankara the prisoners were split: in the scholarly accounting, approximately 150 perceived political prisoners went to Ayaş and about 150 other notables were placed under surveillance at Çankırı. Published totals vary by scope and period — the USHMM gives 240 for the initial roundup, while other studies count roughly 235–270 in that first wave and several hundred once the arrests that followed are included.

24 April is the conventional commemorative beginning; deportation measures had already reached Armenians at Dörtyol and Zeitun.