What Do We Want From Turkey?

[Kharpert]

7.) how many Armenians were in the diaspora before 1915?

Roughly 1 million, concentrated mostly in the United States and parts of Europe.

As for the statistics: We are not trying to calculate the population growth rate of the Republic of Armenia but rather the growth rate of all Armenians, including the diaspora. I tried using your statistics to prove a point that populations can grow very quickly over the course of 100 years. Even if you considered all the external factors, the growth rate percentage for Turks all around the world would probably be at least 5.0%. If it took, according to these calculations, only a 1.2% growth rate for there to be as many Armenians today as there are, then its very believable that 1.5 million could grow to ~8-9 million over the course of 100 years.

[Turanist]

Roughly 1 million, concentrated mostly in the United States and parts of Europe.

Source?

[phantom]

Do you all mind if a take a stab at this?

First, I'd like to point out that the current population of Armenians worldwide is probably no more than 8 million. See wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenians , which breaks it down by country. If you use the high number in the range for each country, you end up with 8 million.

Now, if there were 2 million Armenians in the Ottoman Empire and 1.5 million were killed, that would leave 500,000 Armenians surviving from the Ottoman Empire. We know that at the time of the Genocide, there were about the same number of Armenians living in the Russia empire as there were living in the Ottoman Empire (can someone provide a source for this; I've seen it reported somewhere). Now, for arguendo, let's say the Russian population of Armenians was not 2 million, but only 1 million. If we take that number and add the 500,000 survivors from the Ottoman Empire, that would make 1.5 million Armenians not counting the remainder of the diaspora living in Europe, America and the middle east (outside of the Ottoman Empire), and let's assume, again for arguendo, that the diaspora numbers were only 500,000. Adding all of those conservative numbers, we get a total world Armenian population of about 2 million after the Genocide. Today there are at most 8 million. The number has increased only by a factor of 4. Why is this so hard for our friend Turanist to believe, expecially given that the number of Turks in the same time frame has grown by a factor of at least 10? I would also ask Turanist to look at the population growth of other nationalities, and you'll see that a growth factor of 4 is normal. For example, look at other countries in the region, like Iran, which has seen a growth factor of 8, not counting all of the Diaspora Iranians. Even an isolated and homogeneous country like Iceland has a growth factor similar to that of Armenians, and again, that's not counting the Icelandic diaspora. So, I think Turanist is barking up the wrong tree on this one. He should think of some other way to chase his tail.

[Kharpert]

Robert Hewsen's A Historical Atlas of Armenia had a map on Armenian populations during 1915.