How can we understand and how might we explain the Ottoman decision to shift its counterinsurgency policy to one that was based on the relocation of the Armenians from the eastern provinces of Bitlis, Dyarbekir, Erzurum, Harput, Sivas and Van. First, let’s look at the historical context. Counterinsurgency campaigns as practiced by the Ottoman state from 1890 to 1914 were characterized by large-scale military operations and large numbers of soldiers, often exceeding 100,000 regulars. The campaigns were kinetic and involved the hunting to destruction of insurgent bands. In smaller expeditions against the Kurds and Arabs, the Ottomans employed well-trained regular forces to destroy the enemy. As long as the Ottomans had military forces available, they were never forced to use strategies of population removal, as had the Spanish, Americans and the British in contemporary counterinsurgency operations. The Ottomans also knew that the Armenian revolutionary committees were well armed and that they had significant levels of external support. Second, we should then look at how the war drove changes in Ottoman counterinsurgency practices. There was a genuine and existential threat to the national security of the Ottoman Empire in the late spring of 1915. This was the result of the unfortunate demographic fact that large concentrations of Armenian people happened to live in cities such as Erzurum, Harput and Urfa which lay astride lines of communications vital to the armies fighting on three fronts. While it is true that the Armenian revolutionary committees did not represent the majority of Armenians, they were powerful enough to take cities and large enough to choke and obstruct the flow of supplies.
Unfortunately, the Ottoman state and its leaders were ill equipped by their experiences to deal with the Armenian insurrection. This was because in their own immediate past the empire had solved the problem of insurgency by sending in large armies of up to 100,000 regular soldiers and paramilitary cavalrymen. Such a response was impossible in 1915, as the interior of the empire had been stripped of regular forces and the gendarmerie. The traditional tools necessary for the suppression of an insurrection were nonexistent and this forced the government into an alternative counterinsurgency strategy based on relocation, which could be accommodated with minimal amounts of military effort.Moreover, unlike the Spanish,the Americans andthe British, who dealt with hostile and uncooperative colonial populations,the Ottomans were dealing with their own citizens, the majority of whom did not resist their own relocation. This further reduced the requirements for combat-capable military forces in the relocation and much of the actual movement was conducted by local paramilitary elements.
The decision to relocate the Armenians was an evolving response that started with localized population removal but which, by late May 1915, escalated to a region-wide relocation policy involving six provinces. The Ottoman leaders believed this policy was their only option, given the wartime situation. A large-scale kinetic military response as they had employed from 1890 to 1914—the application of force—was impossible. The Western model of population relocation had worked for the Spanish, the Americans and the British. It is understandable therefore that the Ottoman government turned to this viable and low-cost counterinsurgency policy in order to deal effectively with the Armenian insurrection. As the relocations progressed into the summer and fall of 1915, it became progressively easier for the Ottoman military forces committed to eradicating the insurgency to mop up the battered surviving rebels. In 1915, for the Ottoman state, relocation was an effective strategy borne of weakness rather than of strength.
With respect to the question of whether the relocation was necessary for reason of Ottoman national security in the First World War, the answer is clearly yes. There was a direct threat by the small but capable Armenian revolutionary committees to the lines of communications upon which the logistics of the Ottoman armies on three fronts depended. There was a real belief by the government that the consequences of failing to supply adequately its armies that were contact with the Russians, in particular, surely would lead to the defeat of the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman high command believed it could not take that chance. Pressed by the imperative of national survival to implement an immediate counterinsurgency strategy and operational solution, and in the absence of traditionally available large-scale military forces, the Ottomans chose a strategy based on relocation— itself a highly effective practice pioneered by the Great Powers. The relocation of the Armenian population and the associated destruction of the Armenian revolutionary committees ended an immediate existential threat to the Ottoman state. Although the empire survived to fight on until late 1918 unfortunately thousands of Armenians did not survive the relocation. Correlation is not causation and the existing evidence suggests that the decisions leading to the Armenian relocations in 1915 were reflexive, escalatory, and militarily necessary, rather than simply a convenient excuse for genocide.