Azerbaijan, Baku / Тrend corr S. Ilhamghizi / According to official statistical data of Turkey and Britain, some 300,000 Armenians resided in turkey in 1915. The decree issued by Talat Pasha on 24 April, 1915, established the re-settlement of 300,000 Armenians from one part of the country to another.
The data was provided on 24 April during a meeting held in the Ataturk Centre and organized by the World Congress of Azerbaijanis (WCA). Professor Nizami Jafarov, the director of the centre, reported that the re-settlement of the Armenian population residing in Eastern Anatolia to other territories of Turkey in 1915 was a great concession of the most neutral and equitable ruler of those times for the Armenians. The groups, which betrayed the country, had to be neutralized or liquidated in a peaceful way. Turkey decided to remove the Armenians from one settlement to another part of the country. The decision should be considered a humanistic deed of the government.
Jabi Bahramov, the deputy director of the History Institute at the Azerbaijani National Academy of Sciences, noted in his report that according to official statistics and archive documents, the number of Armenians that died in Turkey from 1914-1917 due to different reasons (war, diseases) comprised of 302,000. This fact disproves the statement of Armenians of the slaughter of 1.5mln Armenian people in April, 1915.
Armenian groups killed over 600 Turks in 1915.