page_title: Adana
section_title: Adana massacre
hierarchical_section_title: Adana / History / Turkish era / Adana massacre
caption_attribution_description: English: Survivors of the Adana Massacre at the ruins of their houses.
context_page_description: Adana is a Cilician city in southern Turkey. The city is situated on the Seyhan river, 35 km inland from north-east corner of the Mediterranean. It is the administrative seat of the Adana Province and has a population of 1.77 million.
  Adana lies in the heart of Cilicia, a distinct geo-cultural region, at a time, was one of the most important regions of the classical world by being crossroads for religions and civilizations. Home to six million people, Cilicia is one of the largest population concentrations in the Near East, as well an agriculturally productive area, owing to its large fertile plain of Çukurova. Adding the large population centers surrounding Cilicia, almost 10 million people reside within 2-hours drive from the Adana city center.
  One of the oldest continuously inhabited settlements of the world and with a name unchanged for at least 4-millennia, Adana were a market town at the Cilicia plain and one of the gateways from Europe to the Middle East. The city turned into a powerhouse of Cilicia with the Turkic takeover in 1359.
context_section_description: Wealth acquired with the thriving regional economy, doubling of Cilician Armenian population due to flee from Hamidian massacres, the end of autocratic Abdulhamid rule with the revolution of July 1908, empowered the Armenian community and envisioned an autonomous Cilicia. CUP's post-revolution mismanagement of Vilayets, caused pro-diversity Vali Bahri Pasha to be removed from the office in late 1908, and replaced him with the impotent Cevad Bey. Taking that into advantage, Bağdadizade Abdülkadir (Paksoy), the local leader of Cemiyet-i Muhammediye, took almost control of the local governance and led an action plan in entire Cilicia to "punish" Armenians. Rumours of an upcoming Armenian attack, deliberate provocations tensed the Turkish neighborhoods. As soon as the news of countercoup reached Cilicia, enraged members of Cemiyet-i Muhammediye and dissatisfied peasants that were left out of work due to mechanization, flocked to the city on the market day of Tuesday. After staying overnight in the city, the groups together with the local supporters started attacking the Armenian shops from the morning of 14 April 1909. The attacks directed towards the Armenian dwellings later in the day and also spread to rest of Cilicia. Armed Armenians could defend themselves and the clashes lasted until April 17.
  After a week of silence, 850 soldiers from regiments of the Ottoman Army arrived to the city on April 25. Shots were fired to the tents that soldiers set at the campground, and a rumor immediately spread that the Armenians had opened fire from a church tower. Without even investigating any falsity of the rumor, the military commander Mustafa Remzi Pasha directed soldiers, together with the bashi-bazouks, towards Armenian quarters and for three days; shot people, destroyed buildings and burned down Christian neighborhoods. Pogroms of 25–27 April were much larger than the 14–17 April clashes, and the casualties were almost all Christian.
  The Adana massacre of April 1909, resulted in the deaths of 18,839 Armenians, 1250 Greeks, 850 Assyrians, 422 Chaldeans and 620 Muslims. Adding the roughly 2500 disappeared Hadjinian and other seasonal workers, the death roll is estimated around 25,500 in the entire Vilayet. Later in summer, 2000 children died of dysentery and few thousand adults died of injuries or epidemic. The massacre orphaned 3500 children and caused heavy destruction of Christian properties. Cevad Bey and Mustafa Remzi Pasha were sacked and lightly sentenced for abuse of power, and on 8 August 1909, Djemal Pasha was appointed as the Vali, who quickly built relations with the surviving Armenian community. With the financial support he could gather, Djemal Pasha founded a new neighborhood, Çarçabuk (now Döşeme), for Armenians within a very short time, ordered the construction of two orphanages and the restoration of destroyed buildings. Cilicia section of the Berlin–Baghdad railway had opened in 1912, connecting Adana to Middle East. In few years, the city had re-gained its momentum and by the turn of 1915, the Armenian population numbered up to 30,000, close to the figure before 1909.
caption: Survivors of the massacre at the ruins of their houses
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