The Armenians of Aintab: The Economics of Genocide in an Ottoman Province

Kurt, Ümit · 2021

Kurt, a scholar born in Aintab itself, reconstructs how the city was transformed from a prosperous, mixed place with a thriving Armenian commercial class into a homogeneously Turkish one. His central argument is that the prospect of material gain was a key motivator of local Muslim support for the Armenian Genocide, particularly among the provincial gentry. The book traces the confiscation of Armenian property and the displacement of Armenian merchants, manufacturers, and traders, showing how their wealth was systematically redistributed to local elites, landowners, officials, and merchants. Kurt then follows that expropriated Armenian capital forward, contending that it helped finance the nationalist movement that built the modern Turkish republic. The study rests on an unusually wide source base: Armenian, Ottoman, Turkish, British, and French archives, memoirs, personal papers, oral accounts, and newly discovered property-liquidation records. The result is a provincial-level anatomy of genocide that connects mass violence directly to wealth transfer and state formation.

No verification date is recorded for this entry. Catalogue updated 2026-07-22.